


Shelter

by saintaches



Series: Shelter [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amnesia, Angst, Blood and Injury, Burns, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Gore, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Realistic Minecraft, Scars, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Temporary Character Death, copious amounts of end poem quotes, dtao3, mostly to do with imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 43,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29162964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintaches/pseuds/saintaches
Summary: George falls into a world where everything he owns must be hewn from the earth and the horizon looks strangely…pixelated. Fortunately for him, Dream seems to know the way home.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: Shelter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2168103
Comments: 73
Kudos: 162





	1. Monster Hunter

Grass prickles at his skin, brittle against his weary fingertips and pushing up between his toes with uncommon resilience. Strange, George thinks. It doesn’t feel much like his bed, especially as a stiff morning breeze dances over his face and coaxes his eyes slowly open. The sky doesn’t look much like his bedroom ceiling, either, blue with strands of white cast over it as cotton stretches over a tapestry. 

He takes a breath, and another, feels the air pushing against the walls of his lungs. His limbs return, sensation creeping back along his nerves as he becomes aware of their existence. George’s fingers twitch as he remembers how it feels to have a body, pinned by gravity and with the air brushing across his skin. As he remembers, he separates himself from the universe and observes it instead. The clouds watch over him. 

George doesn’t panic straight away. 

He sits up, nose wrinkling at the dirt staining his bare feet, and sweeps his gaze over the landscape in front of him. Even though he’s decidedly not in the same place he’d fallen asleep, wrapped up safe and warm in sheets as familiar as the lines crossing his palms, something about this world makes him feel as though he’s been here before. 

Bursts of static fill his mind’s eye, flashes of pixelated realms and hours spent curled over his computer. But however much he tries to grip the memory with both hands, seize it against his chest so he can view it properly, it evades him. As soon as the disorientating mess of colours had sparked within his memory, it’s gone, fading away with peals of laughter as though to taunt him. 

Wood. 

He’s left with that thought, hands moving instinctively to press keys which don’t exist in this silent world. They drop helplessly back down to his sides, at a loss for what to do. His lips tip upwards despite everything, and an invisible pressure he hadn’t been aware of is distinctly absent from his chest. 

George takes a decisive step towards one of the trees pushing its way out of the dirt, and snaps a branch clean off. 

The sun is barely at its midpoint in the sky by the time he’s holding his first attempt at an axe, cobbled together by unpracticed hands and held as one piece by sheer willpower. It pulls at his muscles as he swings it through the air, back and forth a few times in order to test the weight of it. He shifts his centre of gravity a little until he’s used to it, both hands full of splinters as a result of the roughly hewn handle. 

George sets the axe against a tree, marvelling at the way the moss feels under his fingertips, damp and springy. When he lifts his hand, it comes away smudged with ashlike mud. His feet remain bare, and small leaves and pine needles stick to the undersides of them. Skin stained green. He absently flicks a twig from where it’s attached itself to his heel, watches in grim fascination as it arcs towards the moss flooring and promptly disintegrates. 

He’s tugged back to reality as his stomach twists, echoing with emptiness. When was the last time he’d eaten? George casts his mind back to the previous night, but is once again met by the infuriating veil of white noise, thin enough it feels almost as if he can poke his fingers through to the other side. But no matter how he pushes, the wall remains intact.

The silence settling in dim forest hollows is broken as he sighs. He pulls his fingers through his hair until the roots start to sting, an ache which pushes down from his scalp against the middle of his head. If only he could just _remember_ , maybe he’d know how to get out of here. 

His toes sink into the mud as he transfers his weight to his feet and rises from the forest floor. It’s damp, sends chills across his soles. The axe is a comforting presence in his hand, regardless of the way it splinters against paper delicate skin. Skin unused to sunlight, let alone rough wood and evasive marshland. 

After the axe, the tools George makes steadily improve in craftsmanship. By the time the sun is nearing the end of its dreary arc across the sky, he has a range of tools fastened to his belt, each one marginally better than the last. Now his axe seems infantile, clumsy. But still he keeps it clutched in both hands, held out in front of him as an inexplicable panic begins to seep into his nerve endings and wash across the back of his neck like freezing water. Sharp incisors bite soft lips into a bleeding pulp as he attempts to find the source of the panic. 

“Come on,” he says, as though making his thoughts tangible will unlock the closed vault of memory. “What happens now?” 

Above the tree canopy, the sky phases between red and orange like a burning ember before steadily darkening. Stars begin to poke their way through the darkness. George feels as though he should be happy to see them, tiny clusters of twinkling lights which reflect in the pools of his eyes like floating lanterns, but instead he’s only filled with dread. His mouth tastes metallic, tongue stained with a similar effect to crimson wine. 

He’s not sure which he hears first - the twig snapping as something exerts weight onto it, the quivering of a bowstring, or the arrow whistling through the air. 

George whirls around a beat too late, and the arrow grazes against his thigh, ripping open the material covering it to expose a thin sliver of skin washed out by the moonlight. He thumbs over it in shock, but his gaze snaps up once more as the assailant creeps back into his periphery. 

He can only describe it as a _thing._ It seems to vaguely mimic his human form, except instead of being encased in flesh and blood, the thing is all bleached white bones. They clatter together, as though tossed around in a divinator’s closed fist. George isn’t sure how its form is held together, but decides it doesn’t particularly matter as it pulls back the bowstring once more with gnarled fingers and aims with empty eye sockets. 

His palm is slippery against the handle of the axe. When he holds it up, warily focusing on the gleaming point of the arrow aimed directly at his heart, the blade visibly shakes. It’s difficult to hear past the thrumming of blood in his ears, difficult to move when it feels like his feet have grown roots and stuck him permanently to the ground. 

The arrow tumbles free of the bow, darting towards the centre of his chest. George anticipates, the leaves rustling underfoot as he steps to the left. Pain blossoms through his shoulder, arteries filling with hot absinthe as the arrow strikes his upper arm, miniscule scraps of flint undoubtedly splintering off into his flesh. 

He glances down at the arrow in a panic, taking in the way it’s protruding from his limb, a hole punctured in his clothes. Shaking fingers reach up for a second, hesitant whether to pull the projectile free or leave it where it's embedded. Ultimately the sound of a third arrow being pulled into place throws George into action, and his axe comes crashing down against the skeleton’s pale skull. The sound of splintering bone is deafening in the quiet canopy of night, and he swears he hears a flock of birds depart from the treetops due to the sudden noise intrusion. 

As the bones collide with the forest floor, they blink out of existence. Each one vanishes in a burst of ethereal light, whisked away by something George doesn’t understand just yet. Eventually, only one remains, cushioned by the moss and scattering of wilting leaves alongside the skeleton’s bow. His fingers still quake as he reaches for his reward, even though something in his buried memory tells him he’s safe now. It’s not coming back. 

It's not coming back.

The trees are his only witnesses as he takes the bow and fastens it to his belt next to the tools he's crafted throughout the day. They seem childish now, stone tips and rough handles the best work of someone who has no idea what they're doing. Not even the trees see as a tear brims over despite his best efforts, tracking down his face with remnants of butterfly silk and starshine. One swipe of his trembling hand, and it's gone, the only sign of misfortune reduced to his hollow heart and fluttering lungs.

Even as the forest falls away under his frantic steps, George can't steer his mind away from the arrow lodged into his arm. Every step tugs at it, pulling the white aching orb tighter and tighter until he's gritting his teeth just to stay upright. The snow is periodically stained with his blood, comically red against the stark white, a gruesome juxtaposition. A blizzard presses against his ears, and he curses his luck. Of course a storm would creep over the horizon when he's injured and barely covered by enough fabric to stay warm during noontime.

To make it worse, a mountain appears as the trees begin to thin, looming out of the darkness with its snowy peaks and jagged edges shoving bitterly against the darkness of the sky.

George resigns himself to his fate as the feeling begins to seep out of his toes. His head spins in cyclical motions, although he's not sure at this point whether it's because of the cold or the blood loss. He figures if he's going to depart from this strange world almost as soon as he got here, the least he can do is to see a little more of it, even cloaked by night as it is. Somewhere in the distance, a solitary wolf unleashes its anger to the unhearing ears of night.

Before he can begin trudging up the mountain, something shuffles behind him.

His knees sting as they sink into the snow, the remaining adrenaline coursing through his veins ebbing steadily out as he watches the shadow of the thing creeping up behind him. A strangled cry escapes his mouth as he realises he can't run, can't even lift his axe from the floor where it lies uselessly in limp fingers.

The thing walks closer, so slow it's almost infuriating. George's teeth chatter too violently to even utter anything, the freezing cold settling deep into his bones and rotting the last coherent thoughts drifting around his mind. He waits for the last blow with his gaze fixated stubbornly upon the sky, dim starlight better to look at than whatever it is behind him.

It never comes.

Inexplicably, George hears the crunching of bone against steel, and the snow compressing as the thing crumples into it. Glittering shards erupt across his vision as it disintegrates, tumbling through his outstretched fingers in a spectrum of colour. "Huh?" He says intelligently.

Warm arms wrap around his middle, pulling him up, up, up until his legs straighten out and the ground looks so very far away, across a chasm of hazy confusion. He only just has enough sense to lock his knees before the arms retract so he doesn't tumble straight back into the snow. His waist feels so much colder than it should, even when the blizzard laces his hair and eyelashes with flecks of white as delicate as decaying spider silk. 

"You can't die to a zombie, come on. That's kinda lame."

The retort dies on George's tongue as he turns and sees the stranger crouching in the snow, a golden sword resting over his upturned palms as though it's the most natural thing in the world. Gloved fingers run over the scratched metal, and a sigh escapes his lips. "This thing's nearly done, of course. You want it?"

He turns to George with the sword outstretched in offering.

There's a shield littered with dents and scratches stuck into the snow next to the stranger, and he's armed to the teeth with an array of frighteningly wicked axes and swords, a crossbow strapped to his back almost as an afterthought. A hood is pulled up to cover his hair. When George slips his eyes downwards to look at the guy's face, he finds it obscured by a mask, with a crude smiling face scribbled over the flat plane of it. Next to the dark blades scattered over his body, the mask seems laughable, out of place.

George grips at the arrow where it's stuck into his arm. The area around it is beginning to lose feeling, which he supposes is better than the sharp pain that's been plaguing him for the last half hour. "I thought I was alone," he says, the end pitching upwards like a question.

The stranger tips his head to one side, and George imagines under the mask his eyebrows are pushed together. If he even has a face, that is.

“Does it bother you that you’re not?” 

He chews at his bottom lip again as he considers it. The sword remains tilted towards him, levelled evenly at his chest as though the stranger is about to plunge it through him. George wonders if it would hurt much, parting all that sinew and muscle until it emerges from his back. 

It’s with a tentative grasp he takes the sword, mindful of the edges even if they’re dulled to oblivion and back. “No,” he breathes. “It doesn’t bother me at all.” 

The stranger’s - Dream, he’d said his name was - dwelling is nothing to write home about. Drafts gust through the gaps where the walls meet the roof, and the boards covering the flood are misshapen and incohesive. Nails stick up at the corners, ready to claim the skin off their toes. Every time the blizzard presses against the thin walls, George swears the shack is about to collapse, but it holds fast. It’s been balanced atop the mountain for months already, so he supposes it’s seen its fair share of storms and tempests. 

“Are you warm enough?” Dream’s voice snaps his thoughts away from snowflakes dappled through windswept hair and the earthy smell of hewn pine. 

George is sitting as close to the fire as he’s physically able to so his cheeks glow red, and a blanket is draped over his legs because his toes were turning mottled blue. His chest is bare, bandages wrapped tight around his arm with the smell of antiseptic herbs clogging his sinuses to the point of burning. He tries to avoid thinking about how pale he looks in comparison to Dream, all tanned skin and arms corded with the sort of muscle which builds from swinging an axe every day. 

“I’m f-fine,” he says, traitorous shivers sweeping along his back so his words come out all wrong and stilted. 

Dream’s already reaching for another blanket, the firelight reflecting dimly off the white surface of his mask in an echo of gold and orange. George is transfixed by the mirage of sparks flying over the mask as Dream drapes the blanket over his shoulders, fingers somehow warm against George’s skin despite the snowstorm. “F-fine?” Dream says. Even with the mask covering his face, George can tell he’s smiling. 

“Okay, it’s freezing up here,” he admits, pulling the blanket tighter around his torso. 

The floorboards creak as Dream lowers himself to sit next to George, so close their shoulders almost touch. His hair matches the golden fireglow, pulled into a knot at the back of his head. George forces himself to look away. Orange dances across his vision as he finds himself becoming mesmerised by the flames and pulsing embers. 

“At least it’s not in the forest,” Dream mutters. 

“Why?” 

“It’s darker.” 

George knows he can connect the dots between the information Dream is giving here, but the strange wall of static buzzes around whatever memory he’s trying to access. He tastes blood once more as he reflexively chews at his lip. “I’m sorry,” he says eventually, annoyance brewing away in his chest. “I woke up earlier and I don’t remember anything.” Saying it aloud makes his heart constrict as though he’s wringing the blood from it, and acid panic swirls around in the pits of his stomach. 

“Woah, you’re freaked out.” Dream’s voice makes George snap back to the present, hyper aware of being in a stranger’s house with foreign smelling blankets wrapped around his narrow shoulders. He moans, shoving his palms against his eyes to block out the onslaught of light and unfamiliar surroundings. 

He can hear Dream moving around somewhere behind him, feet whispering against the squeaky floorboards with the tread of someone used to moving like a wraith. George doesn’t want to think about what that means Dream usually does when he’s not busy dealing with people like him. Just as he doesn’t want to think about the assortment of weapons Dream had removed from his person when they’d crossed the threshold. 

“Here,” Dream says, and there’s a cup being pushed into his hands. 

Steam drifts up to flow over his skin, hot and faintly floral. “What is this?” He tilts the cup and the liquid tips dangerously close to the rim. It’s a sort of deep amber colour, but it looks more orange when the light catches it. George doesn’t realise his brow is furrowed until it starts to ache, muscles pulled too tight for the state his mind’s in. 

Dream’s laugh is infectious, and George can feel the corners of his lips pulling upwards in spite of everything. “It’s just tea,” he says once he’s stopped laughing. “You look so worried. I promise it’s not poisoned.” 

“Sure it’s not,” George says as he lifts it to his lips regardless. 

Dream’s gaze whispers over his cheeks as he sips the tea, almost scrutinising. It’s disconcerting, staring at the mask even within the safety of the shelter. The tea is hot against his throat. He can’t remember it, but he thinks this is what home might feel like, warming his stomach and pulling the shakes out of his fingers. When he sets the cup down, empty, by the fire, Dream watches with painted eyes and apathetic stature. 

“Why do you wear that?” 

There’s a terrifying moment in which Dream looks down at his upturned palms that George thinks he’s pushed too hard. 

But then firelight is shifting over the mask once more. “We can’t all have a face as pretty as yours,” he says. His head tilts to the side, thoughtful. 

George’s cheeks feel as though they’re glowing, and he’s not sure it’s entirely due to the fire. “Would you show me?” 

His eyes stick to scarred hands and lithe arms marred with raised grooves as Dream leans forward to grasp the empty cup. Up, across shoulders squared despite being beaten with the wildest of tempests, over collarbones pushing subtly against their cover of marked skin. Dream inhales with the tone of someone who’s seen far too much, far too early, walks the earth with ancient bare feet and milky eyes too old for his face. He thinks Dream wouldn’t want him to know this. He pretends he’s unable to see past the surface. 

“Not yet. One day.” 

George trusts him. 

The mountain spring is hot against his skin, washes away the aches and pains which are forming in hard knots along his muscles. Steam roils around him, disintegrating his vision into a dust toned haze. Still, he can see the periodic flashes of light within the forest below as the shadows retract and another creature of night meets its fiery demise. A chill creeps over his spine. 

“It’s too light up here for them.” 

George startles. He tries not to think about how he’s ass naked in the spring while Dream languidly sits on the lip of it, feet kicking back and forth to send a cascade of loose slate free every time his heel connects with the side. Dream has a habit of appearing over his shoulder, footsteps silent and movement quieter. “Can you stop doing that?” 

“Doing what?” 

“Appearing out of nowhere.” 

The silence crumbles as Dream stifles a laugh. It sends another small flurry of purplish rock into the spring, ripples branching out to lap at George’s arms. He descends further into the water to shield his bare torso, even though the steam is so oppressive they can only see faint outlines of each other. “You’re not very alert. And I’ve been thinking about something I need to tell you,” Dream says, words tipping about with equal parts teasing and mystery. It makes George feel as though he’s lost at sea, brine filling his nose and violent wind whipping through his hair. 

“Oh yeah?” George nearly drops the soap into the pool as it slides against his palms. It’s rough when he rubs it into his limbs, gritty and coarse, but it does what it’s supposed to. He’s careful to avoid the puncture wound at the top of his arm, but the soap stings as it passes over the array of scratches he’s accumulated across the rest of his body. 

Dream hums, and George can just about see him leaning back to rest upon his elbows. The blade of his axe winks through the fog, sneering with malice even at daybreak. “About how to get you home.” 

George would love to say his heart aches as he thinks about _home,_ of a familiar world and faces he knows like the whorls etched onto his fingertips, but truthfully, it’s difficult when he can’t remember the place. He has more attachment to Dream, the pine smell which clings to his clothes, the forest ringing the mountain the house is situated upon, even the spring as it warms his body with soft hands. It’s as though he’s acting upon the whim of a George from another life when he nods, forcing his mind between pressed sheets and below a cracked white ceiling. “And?” 

“You’re not the first person to show up here. You won’t be the last. Sometimes I wonder if I was only created to guide people like you back home.”

He’s quiet as he ducks his head under the water to wash the soap from his hair. Remains there for a few seconds longer than he needs, just to feel the comforting press of bubbling water against his face and shoulders. When he breaks the surface once more to take a gasping breath, cramming oxygen back into his lungs, the air is cold against his skin. Therefore, it’s with a shaky voice he dares to ask, “how many?” 

“There is an island thrust to the edge of the universe, supposed to remain untouched since its conception. Reaching it is comparable to travelling through the pits of hell itself and back. Strange, that the way there seems more familiar than counting how many times I’ve done it.”

“It hurts you,” George says flatly. 

The hunch of Dream’s shoulders tells him all he needs to know, the weary bow of his head speaking of a soul worn to its breaking point. “Every time, I can only pray it’ll be the last, but it’s what needs to be done,” he murmurs in resignation.

He thinks about how easily Dream moves through the fabric of this world, between delicate threads only a hairsbreadth wide, yet somehow still managing to remain soft footed and unobtrusive. The dark axe two inches away from his right hand. A hood pulled up over his golden head, and the mask covering the mystery of his face. All of this, and Dream dreads going to this island, for fear of what he has to return to upon reaching it. The spiders return, sticking their wispy legs into George’s flesh as they dance over his back. A weight presses against his chest, laden with the distance between here and the point at which this world ends, dropping off into an abyss of nothing. 

When his vision begins to prickle with black spots, Dream is there to hold him, arms wrapping solidly around his waist. George realises he hadn’t even registered Dream ascending from the rock face. “It’ll be okay,” he murmurs. His breath ghosts across the shell of George’s ear. “I’ll come with you. I know the journey better than I know myself.” 

“Your clothes are getting wet,” George points out. His voice sounds thin, strung out by despondency, but it still makes Dream smile, jaw stretching to indicate the motion. 

“Would you rather I removed them?” 

It shoves the air out of George's chest, the way Dream so crudely shatters the tension. And his mind is no longer racing towards the island at the edge of the universe, around trees clumped in dark forests. It bubbles back down to the spring, Dream's hands warm against his side. "I'm fucking naked," he realises, shoving Dream away from him half heartedly.

George watches with mild fascination as colour blossoms across Dream's neck, pink morphing steadily into a deep crimson. Files it away somewhere in his mind for later. The line of his shoulders is apparent as he turns away. His arms tense softly as he pulls himself from the spring, clothes dripping freshwater onto the pale slate so it darkens to deep indigo. "I'm sorry," he says, although it becomes shaky as it travels over the water.

"I didn't really care," George shrugs, before remembering Dream is pointedly facing away from the spring.

He wonders what Dream is thinking about, masked face turned upon the forest as it's illuminated by an ageing sun. Dirt creeps under his fingernails. It looks like he’s been carved from the mountain, limbs unyielding stone and body peeking out from the heather in bursts of black. Face eroded to a flat plane of white by tempests and storms and driving hailstones the size of sea-turned rocks. George’s chest aches. 

The water parts easily when he wades towards the edge. 

Although the morning air is freezing against his skin, George waits a little before tugging his clothes back over his body. They’re scratchy, rough fabric cobbled together from wool and flax. The limp body of a moth tumbles from the sleeve, brown wings fluttering down to rest atop the uneven rock, unmoving. George moves his arms about experimentally, but he can’t shake the feeling of wearing clothes that have been folded in the same shape for months and months upon end. 

“So this island,” he pauses, breathless. “The island is my way home?” 

Dream’s fingernails tap against his crossbow in an erratic cadence. “Supposedly, a rift is created there. A rift which boils the universe down to a single point, antimatter and chaos and all. At this point, perhaps my world and yours aren’t so different,” Dream muses as he fiddles with the bow. “But George, it’s so, so far.” 

They stare out over the forest with a shared gaze and hearts which clench at the prospect of the journey. George wonders if Dream is scared of it. Of the things he finds along the way. 

Before he can say anything, Dream points to something nestled within the depths of the forest, almost obscured in its entirety by the yellowing forest canopy. “There’s a cave there,” he says. Sure enough, when George looks a little harder, he can see where the earth opens up to darkness. It calls out to him, lifting the hair from his arms and electrifying his nerves. “I know it well. Once your arm’s healed, we’ll go.” 

George can only screw up his dread into a tight ball and nod.

The days feel short now there’s so much to do. 

Dream outlines everything they need to gather with a serious tone and shoulders drawn into a tight line. The words are softened by the pulsating firelight, but they still feel heavy upon George’s maladjusted heart. “You’ll need armour. Gold. Spare shields and axes and enough food to last several winters.”

“Don’t you have spares?” George asks, stomach pressed languidly against the wooden floor. He can feel splinters poking into the exposed skin, and drafts blow over his waist every now and again. But his face is warmed by the open flame, cradled upon two receptive palms. His bare feet kick and back and forth, swirling the dust motes as though stirring through a cast iron cauldron. 

He imagines Dream’s eyes roll skywards. “And if I give you my spares, you’ll be going into the nether tomorrow morning with as much experience as you have now,” he says, exasperated. His tone is firm in all the right ways, suggests he _wants_ George to get stronger.

George supposes he has a point. His arms feel brittle, his footfalls crunch against snow and rock and blankets of pine needles. He still trembles when he lifts an axe, elbows knocking together as he attempts to heft the thing, forming imprecise arcs with every swing. The puncture wound is scabbed over with brown clot, but it stings each time his tendons pull too tight or he stretches his arms out too far. Dream’s right, the nether will not be kind to him. It’ll melt the flesh from his bones and crack his ribs until he’s battered and bruised, at the mercy of the hellish creatures Dream says dwell within its fiery depths. 

“Were you ever scared?” 

“Of what?” Dream’s fingers flit back and forth as he wraps bandages around his toes, covering blisters with narrow cloth stained by age. Even the soles of his feet are scarred. A wintermoth idly dusts its wings over his heel, unnoticed. 

His shoulders ache when he pushes himself to sit, and his neck clicks as his bones readjust themselves for the accommodation. “The night. The caves. The nether.” _All the others you’ve lost._

Dream shrugs, but his gaze doesn’t err from his increasingly mummified feet. “I was born for this, wasn’t I? Maybe I’m still scared. Maybe I don’t remember what it’s like to _not_ be scared.” 

A weight settles itself in George’s stomach as he thinks about that. No matter how little he can remember of home, of apple pie in the oven, moss growing through the cracks in the pavement, the washing basket he’d stopped being able to fit into once he’d grown up, he knows he wasn’t scared. Sure, he remembers moments of blinding panic, like queuing outside a fluorescent-lit exam hall, or waiting in a blank doctor’s office for routine jabs, but nothing like this. George can strain and remember the solid walls of his room, grey and comforting. Blinds pulled lazily halfway because the soft sunshine was taken for granted in his world. Nothing like the wind pressing against the outside of Dream’s shelter, tugging this way and that at his nerves until he sleeps with all his muscles tensed and the blade of his axe resting beneath his pillow. 

“You should take the bed,” George decides. Dream’s hands are breathtakingly warm against his fingertips. 

Amber fills his vision as Dream looks up from the tangle of cotton and the evening light is cast from the plane of his mask. “You’re injured.” His words tumble out like honey. George can hear where Dream’s voice catches upon the bloody ridges of his throat, worn down by making casual conversation when he’s so used to silence. 

“Barely.” George pulls at his neckline to expose the wound, half knitted back together. Skin frays around it, torn and mangled to accommodate for new growth. 

Dream winces. “Looks painful. You’d better have the bed.” His hands raise upwards as if in surrender, palms splaying so George can trace over the lines adorning them. He wonders whether if he were to look close enough, Dream’s life line would continue down into the fabric of this world like an umbilical cord.

His legs sting with needling pain as he lunges for the haphazard pile of blankets next to the bed, compressed with the faint outline of where Dream has been sleeping for the last few days. As he shoves his face into the pillow, he’s overcome with the smell of pine and raw granite. Frogspawn. Leather wrapped around bronzed skin. George allows his next inhalation to fill all the way to the bottom of his lungs until his chest hurts from holding it all in. A smile stretches across his cheeks. He can feel the unforgiving expanse of wood beneath the blankets, but it’s dulled to a background annoyance by the thick wool.

“George!” Dream’s smile is evident in his voice, and it makes George’s heart feel as if it’s pumped full of helium. 

His words are punctuated by breathy giggles as he answers, “Dream,” clinging tight to the pillow to hold it against his cheek. 

Then hands are circling his waist, pulling him up, up, up away from the mess of blankets bedecking the floor. George’s legs kick uselessly as he realises his toes hover an inch from the ground, heels gently connecting with Dream’s ankles. Warm arms are wrapped around him. He thinks he can feel the steady push and pull of Dream’s heartbeat, as comforting as the waves washing over a quiet midnight beach. 

“Let me down,” he says, resigned. 

“Gladly.” His voice ghosts over George’s nape. Dream rests him upon the bed, shitty mattress remaining firm in defiance of his weight. The sheets scratch his palms. George tries his best not to mourn the absence of warmth retracted from his middle. 

_“Dream.”_

“Don’t make me tie you to the bed.” Dream stretches his limbs out upon the blankets, muscles tensed because he rarely allows them to relax. He’s all sharp angles and hard lines, unbending even to the fiercest of mountain winds. The warm fireside ambience has little effect on him, to the point George thinks Dream could probably stick his hand straight into the naked flame and retain his composure. 

George raises an eyebrow. “It’s only been a few days.” 

“Fuck off,” Dream says, words tilting up at the edges so they’re several ounces lighter than usual. 

His pillow collides with George’s chest as he swings it in a precise arc. It doesn’t harm, but he still clutches both hands over his heart just for the melodrama. “You _hurt_ me.” 

“Oh, I’m sure.” The pillow is tucked back beneath his head, cream surface contrasting with the pure white of his mask. George isn’t sure how Dream can see with it permanently secured over his face. He wouldn’t be surprised if Dream keeps his eyes closed, forced to navigate the world using the cadence of the wind and the swell of the ground to guide him. If he were to remove it, perhaps the light would be too much for his weary retinas. Maybe the truth would blind him. 

A lull falls over the room, peaceful as unmarked December snow. George remembers December, remembers pine needles and spun ornaments of glass bursting from spindly boughs. He remembers warmth within the cold, coaxed by fairylights and wine full of cinnamon and sugared orange. But he also remembers the bite of January, the dreary pull of days tinted blue and the horrifying black sun sending murmurs across his skin. January was not happy like December. From the static emerges an image of grey sheets offering little recluse from stagnant skies, sad creation duly turning to reality within the bounds of George’s winter-worn mind. 

“What are you doing?” Dream’s voice startles him. 

“Remembering.” 

The fire barely illuminates their faces anymore, dwindling to sparse embers and mandarin flashes. George’s legs remain crossed, hands abandoned in his lap. A draft blows over his skin, creeping its withered fingers in through the gaps between the boards which designate Dream’s ramshackle shelter. He shivers. Pulls a blanket tight around his shoulders and lets his head fill up with soft pine and glittering snow. 

Dream’s mask remains trained towards the ceiling, hands resting gingerly against his chest as a corpse’s might. His nails are blunted and uneven. “Can you remember anything important?” 

George has to consider that for a minute. Dream’s lowered voice tips over and over in the echo chamber of his head. “Who am I to decide what’s important?” 

He remembers what it’s like to feel contentedness coursing through his veins, and George thinks that’s enough. Faces blur together in his mind, a beige mass with indistinguishable features. But beneath it all resides a certainty which tastes like cloudy lemonade during summer, wild blackberries ripe to the bursting and sweet tea in the dead of night. Dream doesn’t have that. George pushes aside the what-ifs and grasps every sensation with all the strength he can spare, clutches each one to his chest so he can absorb it. 

“Fair enough,” Dream says at last, and George imagines a pair of honey toned eyes flash through the darkness at him. 

George understands why the smell of pine clings to Dream’s skin as they descend into the forest the next morning. 

The spruce trees are colossal, all huddled together so tightly they seem to block out the sun. George’s heart trips over itself when they first feel the warmth of the sun retracted from their skin, but as Dream sends an arrow clean through a skeleton’s jaw without so much as glancing in its direction, he begins to relax. Dream won’t let anything hurt him. Its bones disintegrate in crystal shards as they topple to the ground, tentative bonds severed as the motion flickers from its fingers. 

He watches in awe as they continue through the forest and Dream looses arrows so quickly George can barely see his arms move. Dream is in the process of notching another when George asks, “are you going to let me kill anything?” 

Dream’s hands falter. “Do you want to?” 

“I need to get stronger,” he says, hands growing clammy as one of the undead shuffles out of the dimness. Flammable skin spared by the forest canopy. 

“Use this.” Dream presses his crossbow into George’s hands, gleaming arrow already poised and ready to slice through the air. He pulls himself up onto a low hanging branch with uncanny agility, muscles tensing a little as he reaches to grip the tree. Then he’s standing just above George’s head, balancing with his axe hanging loosely from his fist. “Just say the word, and I’ll kill it.” 

George nods. 

The first arrow misses completely, arcing off into the trees to clatter against an exposed root. George’s fingers shake as he pulls another from his hip and the zombie staggers closer. He aims. Steel rips into the surface of an undead hand, parting cold flesh with apathetic efficiency. 

“Aim higher,” Dream murmurs. George can tell he’s itching to do it himself, put his hands over George’s and guide the crossbow exactly to where it needs to be. 

He adjusts, lifts the bow higher so it’s aimed a little above the creature’s neck. The string quivers as it’s released, but the arrow embeds itself into the tree instead of the head. 

“Just take your time-” Dream begins, words dying as George reaches for the grey axe secured to his back. The crossbow rests innocuously upon the moss as he abandons it, quiver of arrows spilling its contents everywhere like a fleet of silver doves. 

“Fucking die!” 

George rushes towards the thing, axe shaking in his hands as he swings it, carried forward by momentum more than anything else. Black splatters over his skin as the axe meets its mark. He can feel the blood sliding down his face, tracking inky paths over his cheeks. A moment, and his vision erupts into sparkling particles, drifting around his head as it dies. He holds his palms out and watches with curiosity as a glittering shard dances across his fingers before abruptly popping out of existence. 

A smile tugs at his cheeks as he turns. “I did it!” 

Dream remains still for a moment, before he steps into thin air and falls to the ground. His feet are sure against the forest floor, supporting his weight with bent knees as he lands. “You put an axe through its head.” 

“Yeah,” George says. Dream continues to stare at him with unseeing eyes and a blank white face. “Is that bad?” 

“It’s just,” and Dream’s head tips back a little, “I’ve never seen anyone get so close to one of their own volition. Weren’t you scared?”

George feels the adrenaline beginning to leech out of his body. “Not really. It was over pretty fast…” 

“George.” He decides he likes the way Dream says his name, the way it sounds with his accent. It sounds as though he treasures the syllable, warm against cupped hands. “You are stronger than you know.” 

He’s almost left behind as Dream continues into the forest, cloak a swirling dark mass behind him. Then his feet are hurrying to catch up, navigating quickly over roots and knolls. George feels dizzy, and the grip upon his axe gradually becomes more confident as he trails behind Dream. 

The mouth of the cave appears like a gaping eye socket, flesh long since boiled away to drip into the system and birth its creatures of twilight. George imagines he can see the walls slick with blood and sinew for a moment, pooling in jagged crevices to reflect what little light reaches the depths of the cave back at them. When he blinks, the illusion disperses. 

“How do we get down there?” The cave tunnels downwards at a terrifying angle, each twist giving way to more and more pockets until George can taste acid welling up in his throat. 

Dream’s answer is muffled around the blazing torch clamped between his teeth. “Just follow me.” 

He doesn’t check whether George is behind him as he takes off into the cave. 

George’s fingers shake on the handle of his axe as he follows, feet finding the same hollows and holds that Dream effortlessly picks out, even in the darkness. It makes the descent much easier, and the slick walls of the cave less daunting. Golden light trails behind them, cast out in soft rays from the torches they’re holding. The air seems to grow stiffer as they descend towards the cave floor, pressing upon George’s lungs with an iron fist as the tang of metal bursts over his tongue and droplets of water fleck his scalp. His shoulders tense. 

Dream waits for him at the bottom. He pulls the torch from his teeth to grip it with a gloved hand instead, firelight thrown menacingly upon the pure white mask secured over his face. George still scrambles down the side of the pit. His hands smart against the rough surface, and he winces as crimson blooms from soft palms and dribbles down the rockface. It looks almost sacrificial, turns the cave to a tomb. 

His ankles sting as he misjudges the distance to the floor and oversteps. Dream pulls him close as he tumbles, arms already outstretched as if in anticipation. He always seems one step ahead, moving quickly to accommodate everything George does as though they’ve been slow dancing together for centuries. Perhaps they have, in another life. “Your agility amazes me,” he teases, fingers ghosting across the back of George’s neck so quickly he’s not sure if he’s imagining it before the touch is retracted. 

“This is your world, not mine.” He brushes the dust from his clothes. They’re standing so close he can feel Dream’s exhalations guided from under the mask, hot upon his cheeks. Somehow, it makes the looming darkness of the cave seem softer, less foreboding. The black bends towards purple and navy. 

“I’ve tried to forget.” 

George snaps his gaze upwards, but Dream is already turning to face the rest of the system. His arm is stuck out in front of him. The torch burns with a faint crackling, sparks and embers escaping its warm grip to dance in lazy spirals towards the pebble-lined floor. Shallow pools reflect the light with hazy indignance, flashing orange and black in belated repetition as though the truth is belligerent. Stalactites drip from the roof like stakes intent on spearing through the red lump of his heart. 

The cave doesn’t become any friendlier as they make their way through it. Every now and again, they’re forced to hop over underground streams or circumnavigate deep cave pools. George presses himself against the wall every time, pulse thrumming wildly in his veins as he veers away from the water. He can’t remember why, but something about the dark water terrifies him, makes his mind loop in knotted wire. It’s nothing like the mountain spring, dusted by stone coloured clouds and bubbling with heat. Down here, the water is murky and reflects their torchlight with malice. 

“What _was_ that?” George asks as Dream shoots something with mottled green flesh, leaving only a heap of grey powder in its wake. The arrow rolls off to the side, easily retrieved when Dream bends down to pick it up. He looks like a wraith, shrouded by the gloom. His hands are deadly, but clutch glass gently enough George doubts he’s pushed a single atom out of line. 

“Creeper.” Dream caps the vial he’s holding, brimming with powder. It vanishes in the depths of his cloak. 

The name sounds sort of familiar to George, but he can’t quite place it. His mind itches as he tries to push through the wall of static, but is met only with keyboard switches and illuminated blue letters. 

Dream is facing him like he knows. “You’ll never remember if you try. These things tend to reveal themselves when they’re ready. When you’re ready. The light you seek is within you, it’s only a matter of time before it can’t be contained any longer.” 

“You’re quite sentimental, really,” George muses. The juxtaposition of Dream’s words with the nightmare born axe settled on his back isn’t lost on him, day and night residing perfectly side by side. He wonders if Dream’s eyes are similar to the sun, golden and humming with life.

“I have plenty of time to think about what to say.” 

He can imagine that. Dream lying in a bed alone, whispering everything he’s been too late to utter for only the night and the four walls of his shelter to hear. As much as he tries to conjure up the image of delicate lips enunciating the syllables, George is left only with a plane of starshine white and hollow black eyes. 

Before he can really think about what he’s doing, his arms are wrapping around Dream’s shoulders. It’s awkward, with all his weaponry in the way, and Dream’s arms pinned to his hips. George has to lean up onto his toes to reach properly, tucks his chin over Dream’s shoulder until they’re so close they can breathe in tandem. The cave melts into the sort of darkness he’s comfortable with, the sort which befalls his room in the evenings and is dispersed by the glow of his lava lamp. For a moment, George thinks he can feel grey fur beneath his fingertips, but the memory evades him. 

When he pulls away, George swears Dream’s neck looks a strange colour. It’s probably a result of the lowlight, he thinks. He can’t see colours too well anyway. 

“I’m colourblind,” he announces. “I just remembered.” 

“It took you this long to notice?” 

George pushes at Dream’s shoulder and his eyes slip closed as he laughs. The sound reverberates from the damp cave walls, shrill and clear. “Everything just looks...normal to me. I’m used to it.” 

_Maybe I don’t remember what it’s like to not be scared._

The words echo in his head with Dream’s voice, already heartbreakingly familiar to him as a deviation from the silence of this strange world. It’s difficult to imagine anything making noise here when the sun slips silently by and the trees rustle exclusively for the pair of them to hear. George often wonders whether the mountain spring still bubbles once they walk away from it, whether it continues to steam and roil for the attention of the lengthening shadows. 

He’s alright with marking the days by means of Dream’s voice. 

They continue into the depths of the cave until the floor empties out into a ravine, breathtaking as it glitters with ore and oil. A walkway is haphazardly constructed through the space from mismatched wood, and bridges over to the opposite side. George eyes it warily as Dream helps him down from the drop, palms pressed together. He takes a careful step onto the bridge. 

The boards creak under his feet. George’s head snaps up as the sound bounces from the walls of the chasm and flows down to the dark pit of water lining the bottom. He shivers at the sight of it. It feels far too precarious up here, with the boards rotting away and the supports housing a small colony of beetles. One crawls over his foot, forest tinted body glinting in the peaceful torchlight. 

“It’s okay, I built this,” Dream says, his feet noticeably silent upon the wood. “The water’s deep enough to fall into if it collapses, anyway.” 

George crosses it as tentatively as possible, testing each spot before he puts his weight upon it. The water looms underneath the walkway, dark enough to have sucked all the colour from the night and stored it beneath its icy surface. Something about it makes George’s heart beat hard against his ribs, each strike verging upon the brink of pain. Coupled with the sharp drop through the chasm, it’s terrifying. “Yeah...that makes me feel _so_ much better.” 

“Don’t you trust me?” 

“I trust you. I don’t trust your bridge-building skills.” 

Dream sighs. “I’ve been using this thing for years, George.” There it is again, the way he breathes out his name as if it’s forged from starlight and diamond. 

“You’re a little more light footed than I am.” It’s a chronic understatement. Laughable. George isn’t exactly clumsy per se, but he’s birthed from ordinary flesh and blood instead of sheer rock faces and gleaming ores littering caves which loom beneath the ground. His outlines don’t flicker with shadow. 

“I’ll be there if it collapses,” Dream says. The promise of capable hands gripping his own and a dark axe blade separating them from the horrors of the cave allows George’s shoulders to drop a few notches. 

He pauses once they reach the end of the walkway, awe bubbling up through his chest. It gives way to a cave Dream clearly hasn't depleted of its natural resources yet, because blocky shards of assorted ore stick out of the glistening rock. It only takes a few moments for Dream to dispatch the few creatures lingering within the cavity, axe slashing through tendons and mottled skin whenever he’s too close for his crossbow to be effective. Then the cave falls silent once more, only the sound of lazily moving water to accompany them. 

Dream’s cloak drops to the floor, puddles around his feet so the light exposes coorded arms and marred skin. George feels the air in his throat turning stale before he pushes it out in a rush. 

“We need iron,” he says, oblivious to George’s gaze fixed upon his back. 

His hand comes up against the wall of the cave, and his fingers brush over a section of it so something slightly grey is unearthed. When he allows his arm to drop, George can see black dust tracked across his palms as though he’s torn something’s head off with his bare hands. He could, if he wanted to. George imagines Dream with dark blood dripping in rivulets over his sunbeaten skin, gathering in his cuticles and drying to appear as poison ridden veins. A hazy smile over his cheeks, red lips instead of a simplistic black line.

“You’re not listening.” 

George blinks. 

Dream is wielding a pickaxe, just as ebony as the rest of his tools. He swears it glitters with rich blue for a second. It swings and connects with a clump of the exposed ore, sending it skittering to the floor of the cave with one resounding clash. As though he’s pulling glass from the ashes, Dream lowers himself to retrieve the iron. “Easy enough,” he says, a knee dropping to the floor to support himself. “You can use my pick, if you want.” His chin jerks to where it rests upon the ground, a metre or so from his hip. 

It’s heavy in George’s grip. He flips it over, just to observe the strange blue sheen which dances over the pick. “What is this?” George finally asks, flicking at the top with a fingernail. 

“Not iron, that’s for sure.” 

He directs it towards an exposed clump of iron ore and swings it, wincing when it skitters metallically over the surface. George lifts the pick again to hit it at a different angle, but the metal slides over rock once more, unyielding. “How do you make everything look so easy,” he grumbles, before resorting to battering the ore until it begins to wiggle free. 

“There’s a knack to it,” Dream says, lifting himself onto a rock so he can watch over George. His legs stretch out in front of him. 

George feels his lips tugging upwards when the iron finally dislodges itself and tumbles to the ground to rest by his feet. “Iron,” he says fervently as he bends down to close a fist around his reward. He brings it over to where Dream is sitting and deposits it into waiting scarred hands. His eyes itch when silvery dust falls free, drifting in a gradual helix to the rock surface below them. 

“Iron,” Dream affirms. George thinks it sounds like he’s grinning. 

“Now tell me what your tools are,” George says. 

“So demanding.” 

George just raises an expectant eyebrow. 

Dream readjusts himself, limbs stiff due to the unforgiving rock surface he’s seated upon. “It’s called netherite,” he explains. His fingers reach forward to run along the chisel, face so close in proximity to George he can see the hairline fractures running across the mask. It’s far from perfect up close, with impressions of ash smudged in the middle and singe marks ringing the edges. Battered and beaten. “Definitely not easy to obtain. And not necessary, either.” He shuts down George’s hopeful expression. 

“How do you get it?” George presses, and he’s sure his eyes must be shining in the dim reflection of light from Dream’s mask. 

“Ah ah, iron first.” Dream’s arm falls as he leans back. 

It’s faster this time. George aims for where the ore juts from the rock, narrow crevices marking areas of weakness. This time, it only takes a few swings before the iron splinters free, and he’s rewarded with the sound of it clattering against the cave wall. His attention is diverted as Dream shoots a creeper between the eyes, more gunpowder drifting down to line the ground. 

Dream accepts the iron and holds out an empty diamond-shaped vial instead when George brings him the spoils. “Grab the gunpowder for me?” 

“You’re so lazy.” 

Still, George accepts the glass and trudges over to the grey heap of powder. He can sense Dream’s gaze on his back as he kneels to collect it within the bottle, fingers shaking slightly from the cold. How Dream is sitting upon the rock with his arms bare, George isn’t sure. 

“It’s mined using explosives,” Dream says. 

George levels the jar and caps it with nimble fingers. “Explosives?” He brings the vial up next to his head and rattles it. “Like this?” 

“Well, a lot more than that, but yeah. The ore itself is so difficult to find it’s easier to excavate the rock from around it in large quantities.” 

“That sounds dangerous.” 

Dream holds his forearms up, displaying prominent burn scars which span across a considerable portion of his limbs. The skin is raised and mottled, angry reds and whites contrasting before fading into each other. George steps closer in a daze and vacantly sets the gunpowder down next to Dream. “Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty dangerous.” 

His gaze flicks over to the pickaxe. It rests, innocuous enough, against the wall with the handle whispering simultaneously of power and danger. “I don’t usually let other people use it,” Dream blurts. “Or the axe.” His stare is hot upon George’s cheeks as he turns his head back towards him. 

“But you let me use both.” His words are soft enough to be lost to the draft blowing through the cave system. 

“I trust you.” 

Dream leans forward, so close George’s nose is only inches away from bumping into the scratched surface of the mask. Are Dream’s eyes trained upon his? Perhaps they’re shut after all, and George is but a stranger to him. Perhaps that’s why he trusts him. 

He only registers the sound of bones rattling together because Dream pulls abruptly away, and the distance between them opens into a gaping chasm once more. His fingers dart for his bow as if by second nature. The soles of his feet are ghost silent even as he falls the distance to the floor, only the short exhale he gives evidence that he’s moved at all. George stares with wide eyes. 

“Think it’s a dungeon,” Dream mutters after listening for a minute. “Based on how many there are. Fuckers probably heard us mining and decided to come out the woodwork. Shit, it’s close, I didn't realise there was one here.” 

George feels safe here, close enough to Dream he can feel the heat emitted from his skin. His lip tastes metallic as he tugs it between his teeth and bites down. The burst of pain is background noise in his mind, pushed so far beneath murky waves it’s a wonder he notices it at all. “We can run,” Dream says, pulling George close, close, close. Close enough that his words are quieter than they’ve ever been, pitched all the way down to the depths of his voice just for George to hear. “We can leave right now, there’s plenty of time.” 

“Um. What’s the alternative?” 

Dream pulls away. When he speaks, he sounds endeared. “Of course you would ask, you dumbass.” 

“I’m getting used to the life threatening situations,” George says, and Dream is already tugging the cloak back over his shoulders, pulling the hood up to cover his hair. He lifts the pickaxe with ease, securing it somewhere on his person as though he’s not already a walking display cabinet of weaponry. It must weigh an extraordinary amount. Maybe that’s why his torso is so easy to look at, although George would rather plunge headfirst into the underground lake than admit it. 

“The alternative is we raze the place to the fucking ground.” 

George finds his palms growing clammy as they wait outside the dungeon. He’s less certain about his ability to raze anything to the ground, especially now the hellish sound of rattling bones is near-deafening. It sets his teeth on edge. 

Somehow, Dream remains as nonchalant as ever, fiddling with the feathered tips of the arrows resting against his thigh. As he peers up at the hard line of his jaw, only just visible beneath its white cover, George feels his own shoulders relax in tandem. He pushes oxygen in and out of his lungs with rigid sterility. Controlled. A familiar gaze tracks starfall and warmth over his face as his eyes slip shut, narrowing the world down to the dim smell of oil and grit. 

“Ready?” Dream murmurs. 

He steels himself and nods. 

It’s difficult to keep track of his surroundings once they enter the dungeon. The cobblestone is slippery beneath his feet, and clumps of vibrant moss cushion every step he takes. George remains as close to Dream as he’s physically able, considering he’s barely visible beyond the flashing wall of black as he plummets the axe into skull after skull. Arrows whistle past his head, a cacophony of angered vultures, and embed themselves in the wood of his shield. He only knows they’re hostile because Dream’s aim doesn’t miss. 

It feels as though there’s champagne poured into his chest when he swings his axe and it connects. The motion sends a skull hurtling to the floor, bleach white fragments of it splintering off before the bones disintegrate in a haze of pixels. He shoves down the urge to laugh in delight and sends his blade through a skeleton’s jaw. George finds it satisfying when the cartilage crunches. 

The smile evaporates from his face when he catches sight of Dream. 

Dream is terrifying in his element, blank face menacing in the darkness of the room. He’s illuminated by the firelight strung from the walls, each torch pushed carelessly into an iron bracket. They cast a dim glow over the cracked stone walls, lines of perfectly even bricks stacked atop each other with razorlike precision. The sight of it makes George shiver. It’s strange, something so unnatural to be tucked away underground, shoved into the back of a cave. And the creatures it houses are safe down here, sheltered from the burning rays of sunlight which crest the land above ground. 

Only a moment passes, but Dream is surrounded by a deluge of crystallised pixels. His arrows are easily gathered, slipping back onto his person with clean tips and straight bodies. The room falls silent once more as he plunges a sword George didn't even realise he was carrying straight through a gaping eye socket. And the dungeon is empty once more. 

“It’s over?” 

Dream shakes his head. Looks towards the archway on the other side of the room which opens out into another dark abyss. “Doubt it. But we’re safe for now.” 

He’s kneeling next to a chest, covered in dust so thick it looks like powdered snow. His fingers pry at the lid, nails working themselves under the silver cladding as he attempts to open the thing. George watches curiously, steps forward so he can better see as Dream jostles the lock. 

Dust flies into their immediate atmosphere when the lid finally pops open and knocks against the wall with a resounding clang. The bowels of the chest glitter with mystery in the firelight. George sneaks a glance over the lip of the thing and steadies his hand against his axe because it makes him feel safer. Then Dream’s leaning forward to peer at its contents, arms reaching into the box to rummage around. 

The first few items Dream tosses out are nothing special. George finds himself wondering why they’re bothering with the dungeon as a small collection of bones are discarded against the brick, closely followed by a meagre amount of bread pilfered with maggots and mold. He wrinkles his nose and nudges a ginger toe against the bread, wincing when something with far too many legs crawls out of it. Oval shaped seeds are the next thing to scatter across the floor, cream in colour and entirely unremarkable. 

“Ah!” Dream’s exclamation fragments the silence.

He’s holding a black disc by its edges, cradled against his fingertips with utmost care. It’s similar to the way he holds the jars of gunpowder, or George’s wrist when he’d bandaged the scabbed wound decorating the top of his arm. The middle of the disc is what he knows to be hot red, but it appears to him as muted and bled of life. A sigh escapes his lips even as Dream turns over the disc with thinly veiled excitement. 

“It’s...music?” He asks. Something about it reminds him of dark wood flooring, glossy monstera leaves, and a needle running over vinyl. Burnt caramel infused into the rugs. 

Dream secures the disc and pulls more iron from the chest, adding to the small amount they’ve already collected. “Yeah. It’s music,” he says. 

“That doesn’t sound very useful for reaching the island.” 

George decides he likes Dream’s laugh. “Of course not. It’s entirely arbitrary, but it gives me something to do.” 

The happy bubble of warmth in his chest turns sour as he thinks of Dream listening to the discs in the emptiness of his shelter. 

He steps closer to look into the chest. There are only a few items left, with most of the loot already cleared out by Dream. However, the bottom half of the chest seems to be almost entirely full of a familiar dark powder, shining up at George with the odd twinkle of malice. The gunpowder is shut from his view as Dream swings the lid shut. Dust is once again kicked up between them, irritating the film over George’s eyes and scalding the tender lining of his throat. 

His eyes unfocus as Dream moves, melting from a human form with limbs and shoulders to that of shadow, quiet as the moon as she makes her way across the night. Then there’s a shield in front of his face, held aloft by a gloved hand. “Told you,” he says under the cover of the shield, mask a shining beacon for mere seconds before he rushes towards the creatures crawling from the darkness. 

“Dream!” His throat stings. 

Dream’s axe stills. 

George sends the chest tipping over with one good kick. Powder scatters over the bricks, filling every nook and crevice until there’s a thin blanket of the stuff covering the cramped room. The bones are cast atop it, bleached and ghostly. He wonders what fate they speak of. 

“What are you doing?” Dream shoves a skeleton away from him, and the skull shatters against the wall. 

George grins. “Razing it to the fucking ground.” 

“You’re insane,” Dream yells as he runs to the other side of the dungeon, pursuers duly forgotten as he scrambles to fit through the narrow archway they’d entered through. George waits until the green is absent from his vision before backing towards it. It’s disconcerting, staring into so many vacant skulls as they poise arrows meant for his heart. 

He grabs a torch from its bracket upon the wall with steady hands. The fire heats his face in a burst of orange. “I learnt from the best,” he mutters, before tossing the flame into the room. 

Dream tugs him away from the room as it’s reduced to a roiling mess of gold and ember, bones charring to black and the fire eats away at everything left inside. The skeletons still try to stagger towards them, shadowy outlines barely visible through the sheer outpouring of light. George’s fingers reach for Dream’s belt and he snags a jar of the powder, lobs it with surprisingly good aim at one of the creatures that makes it a little too close to the exit before disappearing in a spectrum of lustry colour. Shattered glass explodes from the connection point. “Good throw,” Dream compliments. 

They’re heading back towards the walkway, soles loud against the damp floor. The dungeon wasn’t far from the chasm really, looming in plain sight. 

George isn’t sure whether _relief_ would be appropriate to describe what he feels when they feel wood under their feet rather than jagged rock. The water gurgles beneath them, a terrifying mass sending spiked fear coursing through his most delicate arteries. Over the thrumming of blood in his ears, George doesn’t register the shuffling beside him until a hand, covered in rotting skin and sinewy enough to be undead, clings to his forearm. 

_Fuck,_ his mind helpfully supplies. 

He kicks at the thing, and the motion sends him stumbling backwards. His back aches as it collides with the boards. George thinks he can hear Dream shouting something, but he’s already too far across the ravine, his movement being so much faster. The axe he’s been carrying is too far for George to grip, the handle tantalisingly close to his outstretched fingers. Not close enough. 

This reminds him of the first night he spent in this strange world, when Dream’s arms had wrapped around his waist in a promise to never let go. He reaches blindly for the axe one last time, and something cylindrical and hard digs into his hip. His eyes widen. Shaking fingers pull the vial free so the greyness is clearly visible, and his nerves sharpen. 

He throws the jar. 

It explodes in a shrill burst of glass, dark snowstorm of grey filling his vision before it settles. Gold arcs towards the thing as George tosses his torch. It meets its mark. 

He only begins to realise how this could be problematic when flame licks over the rotting boards, dry despite the peaceful water beneath. George struggles to push himself to his feet, muscles burning as his adrenaline rush starts to run thin and leave him with an empty shell. The walkway is tipping dangerously now as the fire eats away at it, weak supports finally succumbing to the heat and splintering off into the chasm below. 

“George!” Dream rushes towards him. It doesn’t sound so reassuring anymore, the word edged with an impression of fear. 

He registers reaching desperately for Dream’s outstretched hand before the bridge collapses. 

The water is ice cold against his skin, needle sharp bolts running along his scalp as his head is thrust under the water. His lungs burn, forced to run on whatever oxygen he’d gulped down while up on the walkway. It seems so far away now, especially as he slips away from the glassy ceiling of the surface, pulled by gentle currents. George swears his trachea is collapsing upon itself, the sides folding inwards as though he’s Atlas bowing under the weight of the world. Dark spots swim over his vision. Acid scorches the back of his throat. Even in the frigid water, it feels as if he’s walking over hot coals, sensitive skin covering the soles of his feet burning down to bone. 

George tries to kick, tries to push himself towards the surface, but his limbs seem to be frozen in place as icy panic washes over him. 

And out of the static comes a memory. 

It’s burry at first, gradually sharpening as the cave pool slips away and George is delivered beneath a grey sky instead. Like a camera drawing to a focus. His limbs seem smaller here, closer to the red warmth of birth. Unlined. When he catches sight of his hands, they’re softened by youth, palms gentle and open. 

This is the sea, he realises. Salt burns his eyes and rushes over his tongue until he’s certain his chest must be swelling with grit. Cold seizes his joints, squeezing harder and harder until he can’t move at all, not even to cover his eyes so he can’t see the sky growing further away. The washed out sand is so far, pale grey under a gloomy English sky. 

He’s not sure whether the arms are real as they wrap around him, pulling his body up, up, up to break the surface. His eyes are wide, unseeing, blank. A pain blossoms from between his lungs, thorned ivy pushing out of his bones and fracturing ribs in its wake. Night is falling over his vision, only twin golden stars to light the way back. 

And the sea brims from George’s eyes, crests in waves over his cheeks. 

“George.” 

There are gentle hands on his shoulders, ghosting over his arms, pressing against his palms. Sleep is like honey, draws him closer with saccharine sweetness until he never wants to leave. And the sheets here are so pleasant. Comforting pine fills his head, wraps around his throat and squeezes despite the bruising. 

“Wake up, you need to eat.” 

He cringes away from the voice, content to stay wrapped in his womb of blankets. Then the hands are pulling him from the warmth, exposing his skin to the freezing air. George doesn’t like that. His eye cracks open so he can glare at Dream with what he hopes is a little intimidation. “Cold,” he moans, and his voice sounds wrecked. It makes his chest ache.

Dream sounds amused when he speaks. “I know it’s cold, you baby.” He’s waving bread in front of George, still radiating heat and suddenly appealing as he realises how empty his stomach is. The acidic taste of bile still sticks to his tongue. “Eat.” 

George rolls his eyes, but accepts the bread. It’s still warm against his hands. His throat throbs when he swallows. 

As he’s eating, he allows his eyes to wander over the interior of the room, past crumpled sheets and worn flooring, across a crackling hearth and up to the rough window. Night presses against it, and a rainstorm batters the roof with comforting white noise. George is watching the rivulets of water race to the bottom of the pane when he remembers murky depths, a grey sky, lungs fighting to draw oxygen into his chest cavity. The bread falls onto the blanket, half eaten. 

“I’m scared of water,” he admits after a while. 

Dream stiffens. “The pool- shit, I’m sorry,” he says, hands coming up uselessly as though he wants to do something, anything, to help. 

He rubs at his eyes. “I’m the one who made the bridge collapse,” George says, pinning a smile to his face just so Dream’s shoulders will untense. “I remembered, while I was down there. I remembered drowning in the sea. I was a kid, I think. The details are always hardest to remember.” His voice is shaky. 

Along with the light Dream had spoken of in the depths of the forest, there is darkness to battle within him. The reality of it is icy. 

“I should’ve waited. Could’ve put the axe through its brain-” 

“Please don’t blame yourself.” _For me._

Dream sits back and his legs straighten out like his strings have been cut. “I’m still amazed, honestly.” 

“Because I burnt the dungeon?” George picks at the bread again, delicately lifting small chunks of it to his lips. 

“I’m amazed you went into the dungeon at all, George.” 

He feels his cheeks begin to warm and paper thin wings fluttering against the inside of his stomach. “I like how you say my name,” he blurts. And he’s positive his face could rival sakura blossom now. 

“George.” He knows Dream is smirking. 

“Shut up!” His pillow connects with the side of Dream’s head. A yawn is stifled beneath his fist as the ministrations of the day dawn upon his weary muscles, every step and swing of the pickaxe culminating to tug his lids over exhausted eyes. 

Dream is already standing, pulling the blankets up around his body. “Sleep,” he says, timbre hushed. “Tomorrow’ll be easier.” 

George catches his wrist as he turns away. The words almost die on his tongue when Dream angles back to face him, but he steels himself and continues. “You could sleep here too. I mean, I’m sure the floor’s not comfortable, and I don’t mind…” 

It’s difficult to look away from Dream’s face, where he knows eyes peer at him from under the mask. He’s certain Dream is going to laugh, perhaps cast him into the snow, for suggesting something like this. But his head tilts to the side, curious. “Are you sure?” 

“Of course.” 

“Scoot over then.” 

George’s dreams are remarkably free from ocean brine. 

By the time the moon slips around once more to mark the next evening, George has his own set of iron tools. They’re better than before, makeshift blades replaced by shining metal and handles which don’t splinter in his grip. Dream wraps leather around the ends while they’re smelting the metal, providing more comfortable grip so his palms don’t break out into blisters. 

They sit outside the hut, torchlight illuminating the snow with crystalline precision. George runs his hands over the new axe, marvelling at how unmarked the blade is. He’s swaddled in one of Dream’s cloaks, this one fur lined and warm as it pools around his narrower shoulders. It fills his head with softwood and moss. He doesn’t want to take it off. 

“Don’t expect it to stay like that for long,” Dream says. 

The metal rasps under his fingernails. George knows the iron isn’t indestructible like netherite, knows it won’t take much for the surface to become covered in scratches and dents. His chest feels as though it’s been torn open by flint tipped arrows as he remembers he won’t need the axe forever. 

Above them, the stars glitter, galactic pirate’s jewels tossed over the side of a phantom ship to rest against what they know as the night sky. All the constellations seem oddly familiar to him, although George can’t quite place their names. He’s comforted by the fact that him and Dream look upon similar skies, even when they’re from such different worlds. 

“It’s magical, isn’t it?” 

“What is?” George brings his knees up to his chin, thoughtful. 

“The stars. They’re but flecks of light in your periphery, but really, each one may be a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma. Just to be visible to us for a moment on the far side of the universe.” 

George looks at Dream, and finds it more interesting than the sky. He itches to push the mask from his face, grasp at what he’s really feeling. He fears whatever swims in those aged eyes might be too much to bear. 

“Of course, there’s nothing to suggest they’re real,” he says darkly. “I wonder whether this is all in my head. Everyone I’ve met vanishes to the void before long, returning to worlds with other people to keep them company.” 

George’s lips part and the breath stutters in his throat. “The stars,” he stammers. “They’re the same as mine. So if your world is an illusion, mine is too.” 

Dream contemplates that for a long while, smooth white face angled up at the heavens. His hands rest flat upon the rock, supporting the weight of his body. 

He gets up wordlessly, only the shuffling of his clothes sounding to break the quiet. George almost says something, reaches a hand out to stop him as he retreats back into the cabin. The night is colder without him, George thinks. His skin always seems to be boiling, a perfect juxtaposition with his own. 

Then, music begins to drift from the shelter, carrying easily over the snow and vanishing once it reaches the brink of the mountain. The notes are distorted by a faint crackling, and the melody jumps every now and again with a hiss. George sits with the stars and the music for a moment, a glow spreading beneath his skin like hundreds of humming fireflies. 

“Dance with me?” Dream has a hand outstretched only inches from his face. 

George contains the scream that bubbles on his tongue. “I thought I told you to stop doing that.” 

“And I didn't listen.” 

He takes hold of Dream’s hand, allows himself to be tugged to his feet. His cheeks must be flushed from the cold, fingers cool to the touch. The axe remains forgotten upon the rockface, reflecting the starshine back at them with as much clarity as a kaleidoscope might produce. “I can’t dance,” he says rather belatedly. 

“Neither can I. I’ve never had anyone to do it with.” 

George swallows his pride and takes Dream’s hands, lets them sway back and forth with the music flowing around their joined forms. It’s pitiful, really, the pair of them entirely inexperienced. He wonders if Dream would stop him removing the mask, wonders if he’d be angry if he tried. His fingers trace the edge of it. Dream doesn’t push him away. 

Then he drops his hand back to rest on Dream’s shoulder, mask remaining secured over the face he wishes to see most. It’s not for him to decide something like this. He’s willing to wait however long Dream takes, even if the sun caves in on itself or boils their world to plasma first. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. “For trusting me.” 

George only smiles, lips parting to reveal his teeth. 

The music draws to a close. They’re the only ones to mourn its ending, the only people in the world who bear witness to the way the trees sway in uncanny symmetrical patterns, the way the moon disperses pixel-like trails in its wake. Soft as gossamer, yet blocky and perfect. 

“We go to the nether tomorrow,” Dream says. His words sound so much louder without the spinning disc to cushion them. When he pulls his hands away from George’s, a blue cornflower is left in his palm. The petals are silky against his fingertips, each one equal and perfect. “It won’t be easy.” 

A wry grin overtakes him. “Dream, nothing about your world is easy.” 

“Oh, you’re yet to see the worst of it.”

Somehow, George doesn’t think he’s talking about the creatures which dwell within the fire.


	2. Into Fire

“How exactly do we enter the nether?” George asks. Dream is meticulous when he explains the intricate workings of just about everything, so much so that he often forgets to address what George would deem the most important details. He can illustrate the nether perfectly in his head at this point, imagination fuelled by Dream’s hand gestures and the rise and fall of his shoulders when he talks. Even without seeing his face, George knows his eyes must burn bright enough to boil plasma. 

Dream pauses, axe resting across his palms. “I didn't tell you?” 

George smiles despite himself, feels his face glowing from the early morning birdsong. “No, you told me about the bastions, and the warped fungus, and the piglins, and,” George swallows and it feels as though molten rock is solidifying in his oesophagus, “the fortress.” 

“I missed out striders-” 

“Dream!” George’s grin widens until he’s sure he looks stupid, beaming at the back of Dream’s head. “The nether.” 

“Right,” Dream says, sheepish. “My portal’s not too far from here, just a few minutes through the forest.” When he turns back to George, his movement is stiff and forced. A hand worries at his hair. 

_Portal._

His mind summons dual monitors and blue keys once again, a water bottle balancing close to the edge of the desk. George tries his best to look at the screens, but they hum with unpleasant frequency until his eyes sting from the effort. Grey fur brushes against his ankles, light streams in through lazy blinds straggled halfway up the window. An empty paper bag is crumpled on the floor, red letters turning greasy the longer he ignores it. The room is the sort of colour that suggests the sun has just crested the horizon. 

“Put this on.” Dream’s voice tugs him back to the surface like strong fingers wrapped around his heel, iron tight against vulnerable tendons. 

Dream is holding a ring, gold and unassuming. George takes it with curious eyes, flips the band over in his fingers a few times. It’s dented and doesn’t shine in the light anymore, worn to a dull sheen as though it’s been dragged over numerous rock faces and gnarled branches. “What is it?” He asks as he slips it over his thumb. 

“Gold. That’s all that matters.” 

“Ohhh,” he says, drawing it out to savour the way it feels. “Because of the traders, right?” The ring twists around the base of his thumb as he fiddles with it. Gold isn’t flattering against his skin, he thinks as he looks at the matching band wrapping around Dream’s index finger. 

There’s a netherite plate covering Dream’s chest, pulsing blue as he rises to his feet, silent. Dark metal protects his forearms and shines with perfection despite everything he’s undoubtedly put it through. George runs his fingers along the guard, grooves jumping a little under his fingernails. Iron fits over his own chest, heavy and oppressive. “Yeah, they’ll leave you alone,” Dream murmurs. “Ready?” 

George surveys everything he’s carrying and nods. His stomach flips in nauseous circles, anxious about entering the realm reserved for late night discussions and plots. Now he’s actually here, with guards covering the softest parts of his flesh and an iron axe crossing over his back, George feels as nervous as he was on his first day once more. But now, he’s better prepared. Hard muscles are beginning to form under his skin, announcing their presence with aches and burns at the end of each weary day. A cold steel is beginning to settle over his eyes, icing them to frozen lakes instead of August tidal pools. 

“Yeah. Ready.” 

The portal is huge, casts ghostly light over their upturned faces. Angry red bleeds from it, seizing the stone around the bottom and turning it to netherrack. A veil of blue stretches between the edges, wrought from dark rock and flickering whenever he tries to get a better look at it. Behind the portal, he notices the overworld warping and distorting as though covered by tinted film. Hypnotic. George sees the obsidian weeping, but over what, he’s unsure. 

He’s reaching a curious hand towards the rift when Dream says, “stop!” 

He drops his arm. 

Dream stands a few metres back, with the blue fissure pulsating over his mask. His throat flexes and his fingers clench into uncertain fists, a breach in the razor-tipped composure George has come to associate with him. He feels his confusion grow in a burst of powdery magnolia petals as Dream steps away from the portal and clutches at his stomach, an arm pressed flat over it. Their teardrop pink bodies cram under his tongue. 

George is torn from the portal for an instant and instead reminded of cracked concrete driveways, the uniformity of suburbia, gnarled trees stretching their limbs out under pavements. Brown flowers trodden under careless feet to appear tea stained. A laminate table cloth covered in paint and rainbow chalk rubbed into his skin. 

He pushes the memory aside to be coaxed out later. He doesn’t need it right now. 

“What’s wrong?” The petals soften his tone to velvet. 

“I’m fine,” Dream says. His voice wobbles, and his perfect facade crumbles as ancient marble softened by rain and time does. He takes a deliberate step towards the portal, faltering as his boots crunch upon the netherrack. The pause is infinitesimal, but George has spent enough time with Dream as his sole company by now to notice. 

He holds out a hand in offering, pale skin washed almost as white as Dream’s mask by the early sun. The sky is full to bursting with blue, tinting the valley with an air of peace and simplicity. A shame, then, that they won’t be seeing it for a few days. Locked in a fiery Tartarus. George tries his best to absorb every drop of the vitality here, rakes his eyes over dewy pine trees and snow capped mountains dusted with lilacs. His stomach is whipped to frothy unease by the portal’s looming presence. 

Dream’s hands are growing familiar now, the scars covering his palms as well known to George as the lines on a map of home. He grips tighter as Dream steps up to the portal with him, blank face staring without emotion into its depths. It’s tangible, how Dream wants nothing more than to _run_ — George can feel the unease rippling off him in waves violent as the northern sea. “You’re scared of the nether,” he realises. 

“I guess it never gets any easier,” Dream says. He glances down at their joined hands. “Just as I create and destroy and hunt, I am hunted. Equilibrium.” 

George looks into the portal as it whispers narcotic tendrils over his skin. It’s difficult to imagine Dream being prey to _anything,_ blades snapping in half and the mask cracking against dark bastion bricks. The image seems all wrong, distorted. As though George has used editing software to blur all the edges and shift the colours until it’s distinctly erroneous. Yet here Dream is, with his head angled straight down to the bloodstained rock.

He wonders how he ever missed something this intrinsic. It seems obvious now. To cure Dream of his sorrow would be to destroy him, remove the red cord tying him to this world. 

“You are strong,” George says, and he hears Dream’s voice weaving with his as he speaks. 

_Stronger than you know._

Despite the overwhelming heat, George feels as if he’s had a bucket of ice water emptied over his head for the first few minutes he’s in the nether. 

Dream seems to have pulled his confident facade back up as he would a mask once he’s taken the leap of faith, limbs passing through the portal in rambling disposition. His fingers don’t shake against George’s, and his shoulders are more relaxed now. The experience of travelling between two dimensions isn’t a pleasant one, George has to admit. It feels as though all his atoms are still sewing themselves back together with silken thread, tentative and delicate. 

And the _nether._

George stands with his back pressing into the obsidian to survey the nether, his gaze flitting over tall basalt structures and the wells of lava nestled between them. Ash drifts through the empty space, black and dust grey. Unlike silent valleys and desolate mountains, the nether is full of sound, bubbling lava and the melancholy wails of some far flung mournful creature. When George inhales, his mouth tastes of campfire smoke and cracked stone. 

“I wasn’t expecting it to be beautiful,” he says. 

In a strange way, he feels comforted by the nether, by the expansive lakes of boiling lava and the dark rock underfoot. It reminds him of Dream, covered in netherite plates and weaponry. His skin is already damp from perspiration, but George finds he prefers it to mottled blue toes and the bumps which cover his arms every time a stray draft spirits through the cabin. 

“Beautiful?” Dream’s tone is laced with disbelief. “Hellish, you mean.” 

“It’s warm.” 

Dream turns to look at him, and George can _feel_ his eyebrows raise. “Warm.” He shakes his head. “It’s stifling.” 

He smiles to himself, holds out his arms. “I’ve always had freezing hands.” 

“You’re certainly unique, George.” 

Heat roils from the lava lake as though it’s wrapping its arms around him, clutching him close to a celestial hearth. Molten rock cascades in slow streams from the red expanse of netherrack overhead to be reunited with the lake. He glimpses ‘hellspawn’, as Dream refers to the piglins, moving through distant wastes with gold clutched to their chests and leathery ears protruding from their heads. But in their world of basalt and blackstone, nothing bothers them. 

Across the lake, George can see a turquoise tree canopy and shadowy figures which flit behind fungus whenever he tries to look at them. Blue eyes glow from the depths of the forest, hundreds of starlike flecks dotted through the dimness. Dream’s hand slips over his eyes. “Don’t look,” he whispers. A chill prickles between the ridges of his spine. “They don’t like it.” 

“Right.” George grips Dream’s arm to lower it. The nether comes swimming back into view, grey towering spikes bled with blue and black, bruise like. Firework orange flashes across his vision. 

Dream lifts his crossbow towards the basalt columns, an arrow notched in preparation. “Fortress is this way,” he says, voice steady. 

George pushes away from the portal and feels his boots crunch against the rock. He’s sure his face is flushed netherrack red from the heat, cheeks glowing with all encompassing warmth and perspiration beginning to drip from his hairline. 

“We’re gonna be okay.” He’s not sure if he says it to reassure himself or Dream. 

Dream snorts in amusement. “Of course we are. I’ve done this a hundred times before.” 

“Cocky,” George mutters under his breath, heard by no one because the space next to him is vacant and the basalt spikes are already marred by a blur of green. 

Dream relies upon instinct to move through the nether, assuming the illusion of a shadow as soon as they’re travelling towards where the fortress is located. His feet barely touch the ground, instead ghosting what seems like a few inches above it. It’s as natural as breathing for him to traverse the basalt spikes, and his hands glance off their flaky surfaces every now and again as he pushes himself without hesitation over terrifying drops lined with lava wells. 

George doesn’t need to worry about keeping up. Dream runs off his restlessness, flies over impossible gaps for no reason other than to burn time and stretch his muscles. In other words, they’re never more than a few seconds away from each other, working in tandem to navigate through the eerie biome. 

“You’re so slow.” 

Okay, so maybe Dream isn’t being entirely amicable about it. He’s propped against a tower formed by cooled lava, the thing shaped like a stalagmite and careening to a terrifying point. His arms are crossed over his chest as it moves up and down in a measured rhythm. It’s a laughable contrast to George’s state, with hair plastered to his forehead and breathing stuttering as he forces his lung to expand and contract. The soles of his feet burn, and lactic acid pools in his joints. Strangely enough, George finds he doesn’t mind it, doesn’t mind as he fixates his gaze on Dream’s back and steps over narrow fissures which open out to twenty foot drops. His mind feels electrified, devoid of the dark sea which threatens to pull him under whenever he isn’t keeping his body busy enough. 

He draws to a halt next to Dream, head reaching just past his shoulder. “We can’t all be trained killers like you,” he gasps. His throat stings, although he’s not sure if it’s due to the heat or the exertion. 

“Trained killer. That’s a new one. I’ve been called all manner of things — monster, demon, God. Maybe this one isn’t so bad. At least it’s human.” 

George stares at him in disbelief. “Do you always do this?” 

“Do what?” 

He waves his hands around with exasperation. “You know, launch into poetics. I was _teasing.”_

“Teasing.” Dream says the word like he’s tasting it. 

“Yes. We’re friends.” 

Dream looks down at his hands, picks erratically at a hangnail. “You don’t have to be friends with me. Usually I take people to the rift and that’s that. Simple. Mutually beneficial.” 

George thinks he may give himself an aneurysm from the effort it takes to refrain from rolling his eyes. “There you go again. Tell me Dream, do you have any memories you like remembering?” 

There’s a beat before Dream pushes himself off the spike and steps over a gap which really shouldn’t be possible to cross with such an air of nonchalance. George takes a deep breath as he jumps over it, spine jarring when he lands a little too hard on the other side. And Dream continues to walk ahead, cloak drifting in the warm nether winds every time they whisper past. It’s peaceful. 

“I remember being born,” Dream says after what feels like an eternity has passed. 

George feels his eyebrows raise as the skin stretching across his forehead tightens. He has to admit, he wasn’t expecting that. “Really?” 

“Yeah. I remember being scattered amongst the grass, the rivers, the ground. That was before I was assembled, pieced together and delivered into the long dream.” 

His throat feels tight and a pressure is building behind his eyes. To Dream, the concept of _Mother_ must be alien, womb and milk replaced by stars and source code. Cold iron and coal instead of love. A dark netherite plate to protect the hollow cavity of his chest rather than warm arms. 

George almost stumbles as he crosses another gap, hands darting out to steady himself against one of the spikes. A burn settles into his palms as the delicate skin breaks, and red bubbles to the surface in volcanic irregularity until it looks like he’s torn a pomegranate open. “Shit,” he mutters, sucking the wound so his lips stain with crimson. Dull metal bursts across his tongue, hot as it trickles down his throat. 

“Let it clot.” Dream is somehow at his elbow again, appearing as one might jump through rifts in the fabric of reality. He tugs George’s hand away from his mouth so that blood runs over his palm lines instead. The blood gradually darkens and dries until it forms a crust against his skin. “There.” 

“Thanks.” He smiles at Dream, and it makes him whip back around to the basalt. 

When they’re reaching the edge of the biome and the grey spikes, to his relief, have begun to recede back into the ground, George speaks up again. 

“I have some memories for you,” he says, wringing his sore hands together. 

Dream doesn’t turn, but he slows as if to indicate he’s listening. “Are you about to be poetic, George?” His voice is airy, teasing, and George is addicted. Hook, line, and sinker. He wants Dream to sound like this all the time, light hearted and his tone obviously laced with an easy grin. 

The lump in his throat makes it cumbersome to speak. He continues anyway. “Remember burning that dungeon down. Remember finding some idiot, half dead on the mountain outside your door. Dancing to music together and stargazing and sleeping so close your heart doesn’t beat in isolation anymore. That’s what I remember, too. It’s all I’ve got. Those memories make me stronger.” 

The basalt fades to netherrack under their feet, brittle and susceptible to crumbling with every exertion of weight. Ahead, the rock stretches out for as far as he can see, until the eerie mists claim his vision and blur it to incomprehension. Netherrack rises and falls in gentle swells, parts like sinew for caves which hunger for blood and drops into rifts sown with pulsing magma. Wasteland. Piglins converse in grunts, nonsensical to George’s human ears. Gold is flecked across the expanse, glinting from the walls and ceiling with equal parts elegance and mischief. 

His vision is snatched as Dream’s chest rushes up to his face. Arms wrap around him, squeezing tight enough that breathing becomes laborious. The netherite is cold against his chin. “It’s okay,” he says, muffled. Usually, he might be inclined to push Dream away, the thought of prolonged contact loathsome. But it’s _Dream_ and he finds all of his starmatter sings from the soft embrace, content to be held and held and held. 

“I’m so happy you came,” Dream murmurs. 

“Me too.” George really means it. 

When Dream pulls away, his shoulders are straighter. He doesn’t seem to bow under the weight of his crossbow, and his fists have unfurled like spring blossoms. George imagines his eyes are alight with the same fire he’s so wary of, burning bright with the intensity of the sun because in this strange dimension, Dream is the centre of his world. His timekeeper. At some point, he’s started counting with heartbeats and shadows instead of rigid clock hands. 

“Think it’s time we did some trading,” Dream says. A red forest looms out of the mist, although it’s still separated from them by a wide stretch of wasteland. 

Blisters are beginning to form on George’s toes and heels, but he’s quite literally prepared to follow Dream to the end of the universe. Into the silent rift that awaits. He nods, steels himself, and focuses on the cadence of his feet against rock worn by the pressure of the underworld. 

Mining for gold reminds him of pitch black caves, illuminated only by the sleepy halo of light cast from his torch. The nether is never dark, even the uppermost echelons of it flooded with brightness emitted by the lake, which bubbles in a manner similar to that of the mountain spring. Clusters of glowstone pulse upon the ceiling, like the remnants of dying dragonheart. George swings his pickaxe at an unearthed shred of gold. It falls free after a single collision, tumbling down to rest at his feet as a dog returns to its master. 

He straightens up and wipes the dampness from his brow. For a realm of fire and brimstone, the nether seems to be easier to tame than the unyielding grey rock and unbending spruce trees of the overworld. His palms shine with gold, dust smearing across his skin. 

“That’s all?” Dream is standing in front of him. He’s accustomed to it by now. 

“We only just started,” he says with a scowl. _Presumptuous ass._

To his annoyance, Dream’s arms are brimming with gold, stacks and stacks of it resting against his plated chest. The pickaxe across his back is tipped with the remnants of red netherrack and gold dust, and it shines with unusual lustre when he turns towards the mouth of the cave. 

“Guess I have some time to kill.” Dream sits himself upon the floor, back pressing against the slanted wall of the cave. The gold skitters over netherite as he loosens his grip and comes to a halt upon the crimson stone. He crosses one leg over the other. George sort of wants to toss a fist into his face. 

He grits his teeth as he swings the pickaxe towards another knot of gold. “Or you could, I don’t know, make yourself useful and start trading for pearls? Crazy fucking concept, I know.” Another stream of shining metal is unearthed and pulled free of its powdery bindings. George nudges it towards the stack he’s amassing with an outstretched toe. 

“Hmmmm,” Dream drawls. “And leave you at the mercy of the damn pigs?” Iron rasps along the blade of his axe as he sharpens it to a wicked point. It’s offensive, the amount of menial tasks he seems to be able to find whilst George is hacking away at unbending rock. 

“I’m wearing this,” George lifts his hand so the ring is displayed. 

Dream shrugs. “Doesn’t always work. Trust me, I know.” The words sound as if he’s chewed on them for a while, letting each syllable turn acidic on his tongue before spitting it out. 

“I think I can handle one or two rogues, Dream.” He continues to batter away at the cave wall with renewed vigour, fuelled by the sight of Dream’s spoils. 

“Yeah. I don’t want to risk it though.” 

“Awww, you care about me.” He’s angling for a reaction, desperate to see pink climbing up Dream’s neck and spreading beneath the mask. Warming callous cheeks to red. It’s become something of a game for George, pushing Dream further and further into this complicated dance they seem to have fabricated for themselves. George is determined to make him crumble first.

Dream sets the axe across his knees. “Of course I do, idiot.” 

“What do _you_ remember?” Dream breaks the lull that’s been stretching across the cave for the last few minutes. 

George hums and sets the pickaxe down so the narrow space is plunged back into murky silence. “My room, mostly. I must’ve spent a lot of time there.” 

“That doesn’t surprise me — you looked about ready to snap in half under the wind when you first showed up. I was nervous about it.” 

He breathes a sigh of irritation. “Just because you’re like, peak male form or whatever-” 

“Oh _really?”_ George hates how cocky he sounds. “You think so?” 

“I’m actually going to throw you into the lava lake.” He turns back to the wall and retrieves the pickaxe, wincing when it smarts against the welts forming on his hands. They glare with an angry sheen and pinch at his skin whenever he moves. It’s unpleasant, but George supposes it’s inevitable considering his palms are soft and inexperienced. As Dream likes to remind him, it looks as if they’ve never seen a full day of work. 

Dream materialises by his shoulder, because of course he does. The pickaxe vanishes from George’s grip as Dream pulls out his own and begins to chip at the gold with flashes of blue. “You can try,” he says between swings. “But I’m like, a foot taller than you.” 

“That is a gross exaggeration.” 

“A _small_ exaggeration. Hey, it’s a George-sized exaggeration!” 

“Very funny,” he bites. 

He decides to put an end to this conversation before the urge to push Dream into the lake becomes unironic. “My room is grey. That seems to be sky-colour at home,” he says, casting his mind back to the few glimpses of the outside he’s received from the recesses of his mind. “And there’s a bed, obviously, and a desk with my PC. I can never figure out what it’s trying to show me, though. Sometimes when I’m asleep, I hear voices through the door, but I always wake up before I can see who it is.” 

“...a PC?” Dream asks. 

George slaps a palm to his forehead. “Of course, I forgot. I’m not about to explain it, before you ask. I’m not sure I have the energy.” He thinks it would be something like showing electricity to a caveman. “It’s not that important.” 

The last piece of gold tumbles into the pile, resting amongst the others so they refract dim beams of light up at George and Dream. “That should be enough,” Dream says. He bends down to scoop half of it into his arms, and the motion knocks his hood back so his hair is revealed in a shock of sand blonde. Tied away from his face by a thin band. “Ugh, could you put that back?” By way of explanation, he jerks his chin at the lump of gold occupying his arms. 

“Aren’t you warm in that thing?” George asks. He tugs at the corner of Dream’s cloak with curious fingers and watches as it swirls in a flock of forest green. It seems to be surgically attached to his shoulders, only removed when he crosses the threshold of home. Nevertheless, he tiptoes and pulls the hood back over Dream’s head, soft hair brushing against his fingers for a second longer than necessary. 

Dream shrugs, jostling the ore. “It covers my arms.” 

George thinks about Dream’s arms, corded with subtle muscle which tenses and swells when he moves. Veins vaguely visible when the light slides over his skin. His mouth feels dry all of a sudden, and he takes a swig of water before forcing the words out — “why would you wanna cover them?” 

“They’re ugly.” 

Dream’s talking about the burns and scars which span over his limbs, crawl under his clothes and emerge the other side in swathes of pink and white. Each one a painful reminder of what had happened to acquire it. George thinks he could look hard enough and find constellations and cities mapped out across Dream’s arms, faultlines full of mishap and misery. And unspeakable strength. “No,” George breathes. “No they’re not.” 

White fades from his vision when Dream turns back towards the cave entrance, begins to walk out of its gaping maw. He’s silhouetted against the crimson forest and framed by bleeding netherrack, green clothes a perfect contrast even though it all appears washed out and lifeless to George. Vines drip from the fungus like tangled arteries. A carpet of nylium blankets the ground beneath the trees, exuding clouds of fungal spores whenever hooved feet press into it. Blackstone looms in the distance, pillars up towards the netherrack roof where it emerges from the oppressive mist. Dream tenses at the sight of the bastion, and his fingers creep towards his crossbow before he realises he’s safe, the structure is all the way across the glowing lake. He wonders if Dream will ever tell him what happened. 

Then he’s struggling to keep up with Dream as he hurries further into the forest. 

“Wait!” He calls, even though a smile is growing across his cheeks. The warm air whips at his skin and a hot draft rakes fingers through his hair, leaving glowing embers in its wake. White eyes devoid of pupils observe him, cling to his narrow shoulders as he pushes past fungus and overflowing vines. His feet are slowed by nylium. 

When he next catches sight of Dream, he’s surrounded by a group of traders who grab at his gold with greedy arms, only to be swatted away with a gloved backhand. He keeps it close to his chest and hands out the ore bit by bit, a pile of loot amassing by his feet. George can see strange elixirs in glass bottles, a book which glows with the same blue sheen as Dream’s tools, and a small fleet of shining arrows. There’s a distinct absence of pearls. 

As he approaches, one of the piglins attempts to swipe the gold, and his nose wrinkles at the feeling of leathery skin coming into contact with his. He leans away, apprehensive of the height advantage the trader has over him. The empty eyes gaze straight into his with unnerving focus, as though the thing can see the outlines of his soul pulsing with life each time his heart beats. 

“Get off him,” Dream says, voice flatter than George has ever heard it. 

His crossbow is already poised at the piglin’s head, one of the spectral arrows gleaming from the centre of it, spirited into the flight groove in less than a second. He holds it steady with one arm despite the weight of the thing. The trader seems to understand Dream only has to breathe to send the golden tip straight through its brain, because it takes a hasty step away from George, feet sending up plumes of fungal spores. 

George smiles and takes the last few steps up to where Dream stands. “Thanks.” He bumps shoulders with him. Dream inclines his head before holding out his arms, prompting George to deposit the gold into them. The ore clinks together as he does so, tumbling over itself with soft metallic edges. 

Dream continues trading, the gold disappearing into leather skins and loot produced in its place. “They’re a little reluctant to part with their pearls,” he explains. He nudges the assorted items by his feet, and the action sends a chunk of quartz toppling to the floor. “Lots of fire resistance and enchanting books.” 

“Uhm. Have you tried asking nicely?” 

Dream snorts. “Seriously?” 

“I’m just saying, I wouldn’t be too amicable if some guy with a creepy mask put a crossbow in my face,” he says, lips curling upwards. 

“Okay firstly, it’s not creepy, and second, they shouldn’t have touched you.” 

He has to swallow his retort as the piglins start grunting amongst themselves in a way George prays isn’t laced with murderous intent. They seem to be talking about him, white eyes flicking over his face every once in a while as they communicate. The attention makes George uneasy. He draws closer to Dream, almost tucked away behind his shoulder to escape the prying eyes of the traders. 

Dream lifts his bow in warning. The arrow glints. 

But then the traders are offering dark blue orbs with the stars trapped within their glassy casings. Piles and piles of them, swapped hastily for clusters of gold until Dream has more pearls than he can carry. They spill over the fire resistance potions and enchanting books in small abundance, each one reflecting warm light. 

“Huh,” Dream says.

His cloak spreads around him in a dark nimbus as he crouches, and his hands fill with pearls which skitter like marbles. Dream’s fingers are gentle, careful so that he doesn’t drop one by mistake. They must have about twenty — more than enough to locate the underground stronghold Dream’s told him about over tea warmed by the hearth and muscles stretched upon unforgiving wood flooring. Separated from the shelter by miles and miles of forest and grassy plains, frigid tundras and mountains which impose upon the sky. The orbs are dark, unassuming, but George knows they’ll glitter in bursts of fiery yellow once they’re infused with blaze powder. 

“Why did they do that?” 

The piglins have returned to their chatter, and they no longer pay attention to the pair of humans standing amongst the red fungus. George sees a two legged creature wobbling over the lava, shivering as soon as it sets foot on the nylium. It has a cute sort of face, wide set eyes and a downturned mouth. There are others, wading through the orange as it streams from a dizzying height, and he’s not sure how he didn't notice their presence sooner. 

Dream turns to face him, and the pearls disappear somewhere along with the rest of the items he carries on his person. 

“I guess they found something prettier than gold.” 

His cheeks erupt with heat enough to rival the fucking lava lake. 

The pile of discarded leather and fragments of obsidian littering the ground around Dream’s feet seems incredibly interesting all of a sudden, George thinks as he allows his eyes to wander over ancient tomes and spidersilk. He’s sure his face is dusted with pink. He won’t give Dream the satisfaction of seeing it. 

His knees sink into the ground when he kneels, the texture of it not dissimilar to the springy moss he’s accustomed to. “I’ll burn the junk,” he rushes, gathering up the excess leather and blackstone that’s too heavy to bring with them. 

“Stay close.” 

George hurries towards the shore, his feet sticking against the soul sand as he draws closer. It clings to his feet, whispering directly into his ears so softly he’s unsure whether he’s imagining it or not. Leather presses into his chin. It smells of sturdy boots straight from the box, distinctive and comforting even with the threat of impressive blisters whispering from their rigid heels. 

The sand is cold against his ankles as his feet sink into it. He sways at the brink of the peninsula, small dark form isolated in the vast expanse of the nether. Red mist presses into him from all sides, drafts pulling at his hair until it tugs upwards away from his head to whip in tiny waves. George can’t see as far as he remembers, with the sand abrasive against his milky eyes. 

He opens his arms, and the items cascade into the molten depths. Each one burns for a split second before bursting into familiar rainbow fragments which drift upwards and stick themselves to his eyelashes. Dot over his cheeks like freckles. 

Burnt leather doesn’t smell pleasant, rubbery and tarred. It reminds George of thick cigarette smoke and glass bottles brimming with gold, lukewarm due to being out of the fridge all day. His eyes slip shut, and he remembers benches huddled close to tables with splinters sticking up from the wood. Coasters stained to hell and back, plates with chips ringing the edges. And the July sun, overwhelming during the day but pleasant and golden once it meets the horizon. Warm. 

He leans towards the lake, eager to feel its warmth blanketing his skin. Tips forward away from the cold sand as he might tumble into bed after a day navigating the freezing streets of London- 

Arms grab at his waist with bruising force. 

He’s tucked against a warm chest, and he thinks maybe this is better than diving headfirst into the lava, anyway. 

“Holy shit, George,” Dream murmurs. His chin rests atop George’s head so he can feel his voice vibrating through the column of his throat. “You seem to have a penchant for danger.” 

They stare across the expanse together, Dream’s arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders so he can’t move, even if he wanted to. Hot air passes over his lips in shaky waves, stuttering as it claws up his throat and over a parched tongue. “I didn't mean to fall,” he says. “It’s just- it was warm. The sand here is wrong, somehow.” It whispers to him when he steps upon it.

“Trust me, it’s not fun in there.” 

George feels his brows push together. Dream speaks like he knows how it feels to feel the lava rushing against his pores and burning him from the inside out. “What do you mean?” 

The arms around him stiffen. 

“Dream?” 

“Yeah, sorry.” Dream loosens his grip, allows his arms to drop from George’s torso. The warmth retreats from his back as he steps away and his feet sink further into the sand with a hushed whisper. “I guess I have something to tell you,” he admits, shaky fingers running over the cracked surface of his mask. 

“Something to tell me.” His stomach bubbles with molten rock. 

The mask angles back to the floor, away from George’s concerned gaze. Deflective. Dream clears his throat with an awkward cough— “we should find somewhere to sleep first, it’s been hours and hours.” 

“Thought we had a fortress to find.” 

But as soon as Dream draws attention to it, George can feel exhaustive gravity tugging at his limbs. He stifles a yawn behind a fist, and his eyes slip shut for a brief moment as he sucks air into his lungs. “Shit, I guess it’s later than I thought.” There’s no sun rolling over the sky to keep time for him, so seconds and minutes stretch into incohesion. 

Dream turns towards the forest in a blur of green. 

“Rest. I’ll take first watch.” 

George isn’t sure he’ll ever fall asleep with the nether heat coaxing dampness from his skin. 

They’re tucked away into one of the tiny caves, so small it’s more of a cavity in the netherrack than anything else. The mouth is mostly obscured by red fungus, a veil of crimson shielding them from the creatures that lurk in the forest. It’s hot, particularly considering their proximity to one another. He has to peel hair from his forehead more than once, grimacing when it comes away soaked. 

Although it’s cramped, there’s still enough space for Dream to stand without whacking his skull into unforgiving netherrack, as well as swing an axe uninhibited. He flips it over in his palms now, more to reassure himself it’s there than anything else. The edge gleams, newly sharpened. Their heads snap up as a ghast wails and its spectral form drifts through the empty space above the lake, before vanishing in the mist. Chills ripple along his arms, bare in an attempt to combat the sweltering heat. 

“You said you had something to tell me.” 

Their knees touch as Dream sits across from him. The cavity walls push them closer, until there’s only a foot or so stretching the distance between their faces. Flesh and mask perfect opposites. “I’m worried it’ll make you look at me differently.” 

George wants to push his fears aside, reassure him that _no, of course I wouldn’t. Nothing could._ Instead, he asks, “how do I look at you?” 

“There’s a certain softness to it. Makes me wonder- well, it makes me wonder a lot of things.” 

George’s chest feels lighter around Dream. It doesn’t surprise him the light spreads behind his eyes and illuminates his face. 

“But that’s not the point,” Dream continues. He understands — conversations like that are dangerous, lead to so many things neither of them are allowing themselves to think about for fear of it becoming visceral and real. 

“I’ve died before,” he says. 

He blinks, slow to give himself time to think. “You’ve died,” he breathes, and the end tips upwards in intonation. 

“Over and over again,” Dream ascertains. “Until I thought my mind was about to burn before my body ever could.” 

George reaches out to touch Dream as if to be certain he’s real. His fingers push into flesh, tangible and vibrant. “But you’re here.” It’s not a question this time, because he knows Dream isn’t a figment of his imagination, he thrums with all the atoms of the air and sky and sea. Starmatter rearranged into someone with warm hands and skin smelling of pine needles. 

“I’m here. I always wake up in the bed, naked and aching all over. Only the wounds to show anything’s happened at all.” He holds his arms out from his cloak once again, displays burns and jagged cuts so deep George knows they’ll never truly heal. They pulse angrily in the lowlight, aggravated and bloodthirsty. “The lake fucking sucks, trust me.” 

All those layers of dark orange heat pressing against Dream’s skin. His throat closes up so his words come out stilted and disjoined. “Does it hurt?” He’s terrified of the answer. 

“Like having every atom sewn back together one by one,” Dream says with a dark laugh. “I can deal with that. What’s worse is how many times I have to relive it, stuck in purgatory for what feels like months, years, even. Sometimes I wonder how long I spend, waiting for my body to reassemble itself while I drown in the lake or feel the sword through my ribs a million times over. Perhaps it’s a matter of seconds. I haven’t decided whether that’d be a blessing or not. And then I wake, breathing faster and faster every time I realise I’m alive, the thousands of deaths aren’t real.”

George’s eyes are wide, horrified. “Dream-” 

“I have to wear the mask. I grew tired of the disdain.” Dream seems to steel himself, fingers clutching into tight fists atop his thighs. “But now you know. You can look, George.” 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable-” 

“It’s okay,” Dream murmurs. He guides George’s fingers to the edge of his mask with gentle hands, presses his skin to the smooth surface before his arms drop. “I trust you with my life. More, even. I trust you with everything.” 

George’s thumb circles next to where one of the eyes is dotted and his gaze flutters over the arcing smile. The mask is held in place by his hands now, pressed against Dream’s face by his resolve alone. “Aren’t you scared?” 

“I think,” Dream says. Pauses. Turns the words over and over in his mouth until they mature into sensibility like aged wine. “I think it’s alright to be scared sometimes. Isn’t that part of being human?” 

George thinks of fire burning hotter than the stars, reaching up to scald Dream’s ankles and tug at his nerves. Over and over again. Until his flesh is charred and the light fades from his eyes, only to be restored against his will each time. A spark forced through layers of cold obsidian, nestled in the middle of freezing rock regardless of how unyielding it is. Nerves frayed to tatters by the heat and swirling drafts which blow through the nether. Golden axes pressed against a choked throat. The red line that blossoms beneath each blade, dividing Dream’s neck until his limbs adopt the same stiffness as a marionette. 

His fingers loosen, until the mask starts to slip a few centimetres and the beginning of a widow’s peak is revealed. “I guess it is.” 

“So do it. Scare me so bad I feel human again.” 

The mask drops. 

And there are amber eyes staring into his, wide and welling to the brim with trepidation. Scars cover his cheeks, forehead, temples, carve out sections of his flesh and thread white lines through his eyebrows. Dream blinks, and George’s breath is expelled from his lungs when his eyes are revealed once again, molten gold and sunbeam condensed into two pools just for him to look at. Dark pupils sit in the midst of it all, huge and unused to the light level. Glassy water floods over gold, affronted by the brightness and fire and melting rock.

George’s lips are parted in awe, fingers twitching with the urge to press over the scars so Dream knows he doesn’t care, couldn’t give less of a shit about any of them. An ache blossoms in his chest as his heart thrums with urgency. _Oh, fuck._

“It’s bad,” Dream says. When he grins and the corners of it don’t reach further than his cheeks, George thinks he might cry because he’s looking at Dream _smile_ for the first time, lips parted over teeth and his skin crumpling along the fault lines. He wants more than anything to make it genuine.

He shakes his head and his fingers brush along the corners of Dream’s jaw. “No. No, it’s not bad. Your eyes are so-” he swallows the _beautiful_ which bubbles up his throat. 

“You don’t have to lie.” 

George rolls his eyes even as thistles push against them. “I’m not _lying,_ Dream. They’re golden, to me.” He imagines Dream’s eyes are marshland green, but the forest has always appeared ochre to him.

Before he can process what he’s doing, he leans forward and his lips press over a maimed cheek, gentle because he’s not sure how tender the scars are. Whether the heat of his mouth would hurt, burning against delicate tissue and sending aches over his neurons. Dream sits with wide eyes as George kisses his temple, so soft he can barely feel the ridged skin under his lips. Everything feels lighter now, his heart buoyant and lungs pulling in oxygen with the revived desperation of a drowning man. He thinks, in another life, perhaps him and Dream are two halves of the same soul. 

Dream’s gaze turns icy fluorescent instead of warm when George pulls away, and his hands drift to rest atop his thighs. Vacant. 

“We can’t do this,” he whispers. It looks as though the words break him. “We can’t.” His fingers rest against the spot George had kissed with shaky awe as if he wants to hold it forever. 

“I know,” George says, and his heart fragments into a million rainbow pieces. He has no claim to Dream, no right to press lips to his skin. “But I wanted you to know.” 

“Know what?” 

He presses their foreheads together even though he’s right, they _can’t_ do this, not when George’s existence in Dream’s world is fleeting, liminal. But George wants to be selfish, steal this moment for himself and store it with the rest of the pitiful memories he has to cling to. Their cheeks mirror that of the crimson stem, hot and vivid. Dream’s exhalation flutters across his jaw. This time he pushes the words out before they have the chance to die upon his tongue,

“You’re beautiful.” 

“I can’t believe you let me sleep the whole night,” George accuses. Despite the hours of sleep Dream had let him have instead of waking him in order to take the watch, his muscles ache and dizziness tugs at his core. Iron fingers against a stomach full of stale bread. 

He can’t say he’s surprised — he’s lost count of the amount of times he’s woken up to a ceiling streaked with late afternoon sun and the blankets pooled around his shins, kicked off at some point in the morning when the light had fallen upon the shelter to warm it. The bed next to him cool under his fingertips. Empty. Sound of a spare axe splitting wood outside the sole pointer to Dream’s existence. 

_Why didn't you wake me?_ He remembers saying, with a blanket clutched around his shoulders and dragging along the floorboards. 

_You looked peaceful._

He thinks Dream’s always been a little soft around the edges. 

Dream hums as he flits across the forest. His feet seem to move before his mind, finding holds and sturdy planes to launch from easier than breathing. George is left to straggle behind. “You needed the sleep more than me,” Dream says. It sounds like brewing amber tea and early sunsets. White flowers dotted over mountaintops like snow. “You still look tired.” 

George doesn’t need to be reminded of the bruises which tend to form under his eyes when he’s slept poorly. He’s sure he looks undead, with pale skin and hair flattened by grease. For once, he longs to have a hood covering his head as Dream does, regardless of how suffocating the fabric is. His collarbones must be painfully visible, sticking out above the iron chestplate at awkward angles. The mask no longer covers Dream’s face, abandoned in a past life when they were but strangers to each other. He likes seeing his smile whenever he wants. 

“I’d probably be less tired if I’d stayed awake.” But his words fall upon deaf ears as Dream ascends over a lip of netherrack and pauses, clothes seized by the draft to swirl around him in ethereal pulses. George hurries up to join him. 

Then the fortress is looming over them, dark walkways and pillars forcing bluntly out of the mist to impose upon their tiny forms. He drags his eyes over the brick, up and up until he fears it’ll never end. It appears almost like an ungodly arachnid, with spindly limbs stretching from blood-filled joints to stick its legs into the netherrack. George swears something crawls over his spine. Spinning creatures of flame drift near the top of the structure, gathering upon small platforms which line the bridges. Everything about it seems to scream _bad omen,_ from the dark colour to the sword wielding skeletons he can see patrolling the open corridors. 

It feels as though the air will drown him.

“Holy shit,” he murmurs. 

“We only need to kill a few.” Dream bumps an elbow against his. “It’ll be over soon, easy.” 

He nods, unconfident. “Easy.” 

“Everything’s been easy so far, right? This is just...slightly worse.” 

He turns to look at Dream and pretends he can’t see the fear polluting his eyes. Fear in the shape of vicious flames and an invisible scythe. “I’m not saying you’re being deceitful on purpose, but I’ve never believed you less.” 

“Up to you.” Dream walks towards the structure and from the confident set of his shoulders, George can forget the spark of terror in his irises. 

Getting into the fortress is straightforward enough, and scaling the walls isn’t so bad when he has Dream pointing out where to shove his toes and dig his nails. By the time they’re tumbling onto the walkway, George’s cuticles are full of netherbrick dust and ash. His feet hurt from cramping. He can feel his patience beginning to fray as heavy iron tools tug at his sore muscles. A whine blossoms in his throat. 

The sound of his footsteps is second only to the thrumming of his blood in his ears, hot and frenzied. His palms sweat upon the handle of his axe until old blisters begin to reform in irritable clusters. 

Dream looks unphased by it all, fingers moving with the same swiftness as ever to embed golden arrows into dark skulls and toss a flurry of crystallised remnants over the dark flooring. Once, a skull is left behind, but Dream only examines it for a second before straightening up and continuing towards where the platforms are situated. Gaping eye sockets are the only witnesses to their retreat. A beat, and the skull flickers out of existence too. Their secrets are safe, forever locked in the creature’s head. 

“Ready?” Dream’s face appears in front of him. He doesn’t flinch. 

Instead, a wry smile tugs over his cheeks until the corners of his lips crackle with pain, skin dried and rigid. Dream’s eyes flicker to the movement. Stick there for a short enough period that George can brush it off as his imagination. 

“Fuck yeah.” 

The blazes are easy enough to kill with an axe through the head, yellow flesh peeling off to either side of their blades. Dream yanks him around the corner when they’re about to spew fire in a rushing inferno, his senses honed to perfection by years of eroding the bricks with his soles. He tries to keep his mind in check each time he’s pulled against a warm chest with arms bracketing his shoulders. Then, they storm the platform together, axes out and ready to claim the white life force which illuminates the creatures’ eyes. 

It’s a routine they fall into with ease. Dream gives him enough space to swing a blade while also lingering close by, poised and ready to put an end to anything that touches him. 

But George is becoming quick and nimble, using his smaller stature to his advantage to squeeze into gaps Dream can’t with the netherite overflowing from his shoulders. He ducks under a stray fireball as it’s hurled in his direction, ignorant to Dream’s sharp intake of breath. It’s followed by flesh tearing apart and a fiery rod clattering to the floor. His fingers wrap around it, warmed. 

“Flirting with death, are we?” Dream says with an eyebrow raised higher than the other. George is addicted to his expressions, drunk on the way his lips tug up into lazy sunbeam smiles and ignite his eyes. The platform is empty for now, and they linger in the shadowy corridor, waiting. 

“I’m not the one who jumps over hundred metre chasms for no reason,” he retorts. 

Before Dream can quip back at him, the platform refills with blaze, each one angered and spinning with blistering heat. The sound they make is ungodly. Like the last breaths of a creature with collapsing lungs, faltering upon oxygen as its delicate trachea caves in. It makes his fingers tighten around his axe. 

They glance at each other, steely eyed, before rushing forward. 

It’s not long until they’ve collected enough rods to open the portal more than once, hands carried away with the thrill of it. Dream says the portal breaks each time he uses it, shattered into void fragments so he’s not tempted to swim to other worlds. The platform ebbs back to silence and they stand, back to back, chests heaving with exertion. George can finally see Dream’s face glistening with dampness, and it makes him appear more human. 

He finds his mind tugging down at the corners. They’ve completed this part of their journey, and the farflung island draws ever closer. Why he detests the idea of home is unbeknownst to him. 

George hops off the platform with a certain degree of grace. He can feel a gaze whispering over his shoulders, spreading hot red over the back of his neck. Dusting the tips of his ears and the heights of his cheeks. 

He allows himself to wonder for a moment what would happen if he stayed here, allows the island to stay distant and fantastical. Whether Dream would finally stop drawing away from him, allow their skin to slide together in hazy warmth without ice water crashing over his senses. What his lips and tongue would taste like, muddied with blood and elevated mountain air. How the music disc would sound, crackling in a lonely jukebox, the only one of its kind in this silent realm. If he’d wake up to warm sheets, a watchful moon casting protective glances over their home. His throat feels tight all of a sudden. Home home home- 

“George!” 

The proclamation of his name makes him whirl around, orange and dark red blurring together in a brown mass. George curses his vision as his surroundings bleed into each other, similar tones incomprehensible from the rest. But the chaos is disrupted by his version of green, flying across his periphery as Dream lunges in front of him axe-first. His hood is shoved back by the movement, falling so his hair is flung into a crown around his head. He hears something collide against flesh, searing the air with hot embers and enraged flame. A skull against brick. 

George blinks. 

It takes him a second to notice the fire spreading across Dream’s torso. 

“Shit,” he says, bow clattering to the floor as he sinks to his knees so hard he hears the sickening crunch of bone against nether brick. His hands come up uselessly as the flames escalate, devouring his clothes where they fall free of the netherite. There’s blood pooling around them and Dream’s hair is soon soaked with crimson as it flows from the back of his head. George has never seen him stumble like this. Not so his head collides against unforgiving stone and leeches the light from golden eyes. Not so his fingers lie, unmoving, in his own blood.

He grabs the cloak, pulls it with shaking hands over Dream’s body even as the flame singes the air bracketing his skin. His hands thud weakly against the chestplate, moving in frenzied swings as he attempts to smother the fire. The blaze loom from the platform, white eyes seeking out the source of burning flesh and flax. 

George shudders in relief when he pulls the cloak back and sees the flames diminish, starved of oxygen by its heavy wool. Then the panic begins to build back up in his mind because Dream’s eyes are drawn shut and the lake of blood continues to seep into his clothes. “Please wake up,” he begs, fingers slick with red grabbing desperately at his jaw to turn it this way and that. As though it’ll shake the consciousness back into him. 

He barely manages to lean out of the way as a firecharge is sent his way. Instead, it rebounds from the dark fortress floor before fizzling into nothing. His teeth grind together hard enough to crunch, soaking fingers gripping at Dream’s unconscious form with the desperation of someone clinging to a cliff precipice. Instead of mud beneath his nails, George only finds red. 

Dream is heavy, makes his arms tremble as he drags him away from the blaze platform. Netherite rasps against the floor, metallic and grating. A stream of flame singes the back of his neck, and he can feel the skin swelling up with tender pink. “Fuck,” he says again, vision swimming with salt and brine. 

It’s the best he can do to drag Dream around the corner before allowing his body to slump back to the floor. The blazes rage behind him, but he knows their senses are poor enough to keep them safe for now. 

“Wake up wake up wake up,” he says like a mantra, hands fretting over Dream’s scarred face. He can see where his skin is burnt, throat blistering with violent red and pink. It’s difficult to tell how much of it has been destroyed when the marks sit atop scars upon scars, each one interlacing until it’s impossible to see where additions have been made. His fingers pull at a charred neckline to reveal more burns webbing across his chest and shoulders. When he holds the back of his hand to Dream’s face, he feels air stuttering against it in shaky currents. At least he’s breathing. 

George’s spine clicks when he sits up and pushes his back straight instead of curling over Dream’s form. 

The nether brick fades from his view as he retreats into his mind, blocking out the sound of firecharges hurled through the air and the rattling of smoke grey skeletons. Wailing overpowers his thoughts as a ghast floats by, sensing his misery and sparing him from further torment. And he’s left alone with bleak static. If only he could remember something, _anything_ from his life that could help- 

Fluorescent lights cool his mind, apathetic and buzzing from high on the ceiling. Suspended by dusty chains with cobwebs spanning between each one. The grid ceiling is lined with tiles yellowed by age, brown stains appearing in the corners where the roof is leaking and the damp has seeped through. Rain presses against the windows. They’re mounted so high up he can’t see anything more than a grey strip of sky, cloudy and fading to black even though the clock has yet to reach four pm. 

His hands are gritty from pressing against the floor. It’s disgusting, he thinks as he brushes his palms off on his trousers. Soreness spreads over his muscles. The corners of his mind yearn for bed, and trace the journey home with breakneck eagerness because all he wants is to fall asleep for a few hours. Round this street corner, over that pothole, down the nefarious hill which bolsters his road. George imagines his front door and nearly weeps. 

One of his friends is fucking around with the CPR dummy, although he doesn’t pay much attention. The instructor is saying something about mouth to mouth, words drawing out in meaningless circles until George can’t tell the front of the sentences apart from the ends. He doesn’t want to be here, but he needs to get his bullshit first aid certificate for some expedition they’re supposed to be going on next month. Somehow he highly doubts anyone will need to be resuscitated during the trip. It’s an effort not to roll his eyes. His thoughts drift towards counter-strike. 

He tunes back in for long enough to hear the instructor say “and what about if someone’s unconscious?” 

His friend slaps the CPR dummy. Quiet laughter blankets their little circle, which only seems to fuel his ego more. 

“Ah no, _please_ don’t slap an unconscious person.” The guy sounds sick to death of them. George isn’t sure what he was expecting from a group of antsy sixteen year olds stuck in the sports hall out of obligation more than anything else. “Although the sudden pain might wake them up, I suppose…” 

The nether rushes back around him, pale lighting replaced by hot orange and vivid red covering his hands. He looks down at Dream’s chest as it lifts in slow influxes. At his fingers. 

_Please don’t slap an unconscious person._

He slaps Dream, hard. 

And Dream stirs, the whites of his eyes flickering beneath his eyelids. George gasps, leaning forward to pull bloody fingers through his hair. “Dream, wake up,” he says with more purpose. 

“Hurts,” is the answer he gets. The syllable is dragged along a raw throat before dropping into his hands, dying and broken. 

Dream’s cheeks are slick as he rubs his thumbs over them, scars bumping up against the pads in rolling valleys. “I know it hurts. We have to get out of here.” He has no idea how he’s going to get Dream home, not when he looks close to death on the floor of the nether fortress. 

“You can’t get me back.” Dream voices his thoughts. Uncanny, how synchronised their minds seem to be despite all their differences. “You know you can’t.” 

Regardless, he sticks an arm under Dream’s, pulls him into a sitting position so he’s propped against the wall. His limbs shudder with the exertion. Blood coats his tongue as his lip splits, worn raw by his teeth as he worries away at it. And as though he’s resigned himself to defeat, Dream smiles sadly up at him, yellow eyes dimmer than they had been a few minutes ago. 

Hot brine spills over his cheeks, pulling out salt and grit until he’s certain he’s drowning. “Why’d you have to get yourself set alight?” He asks in delirium. An exasperated laugh gushes from him. “Damn it, Dream. You hate fire.” 

“Exactly, I hate it. And now you don’t have to.” His words slur with concussion. 

George blinks to clear his vision. “I’m not leaving you here, you fucking _idiot.”_

“You don’t have to.” 

He’s about to bite a retort, lips opening in preparation, when Dream’s hands press over his. Wrap his fingers tight around a sturdy hilt. A flat diamond sits in the centre of it, refracting light in beams as fragmented as the surface of Dream’s marred skin. 

George can taste bile pooling under his tongue as he lifts the sword, sees the full length of it bursting with blue more ominous than the deep sea. His nails rasp along the blade, careful to avoid the edges. He’s sure the sword must look silly in his grip, long and unwieldy as he lifts it to the light. It stretches across the gap between them and George is reminded of shuffling footsteps, a battered gold sword, snow between his toes. Flaked across his cheeks. “Why?” He asks, lips rushing to form around words which never come. “Why would you give me this?” 

“You know I can’t make it back, so kill me.” 

“No. No fucking way.” He shakes his head. 

After everything Dream’s told him about dying, George can’t believe he thinks he’d agree so easily. Agree to tossing him to the wolves, subjecting him to the way time seems to bleed into meaninglessness as his starmatter reforms from the soles up. Leave him to relive it a thousand times over until his mind is flung out across the mountains like ashes. 

Dream pulls him close, so close their noses almost brush. His eyes are overwhelming from this distance, bright and huge and containing entire constellations for George to decode. “It’s alright,” he reassures. “I’ll be waiting for you when you return. Like nothing ever happened.” 

_Except it’s not nothing,_ George wants to scream. 

“George, if it’s not you, it’ll be something worse on the way back. I want it to be you. Swords were always cleaner than axes.” 

“And more difficult to use,” he whispers. 

Dream hums, fingers playing with George’s. Icefire, in perfect serendipitous harmony. “On a moving target. But I’m not moving, am I?.” 

His lips press directly between furrowed eyebrows, petal soft and spilling with crimson. “It’ll hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“I promise you won’t.” 

He searches those golden eyes for even a speck of doubt. Anything to make him change his mind, to haul Dream to his feet and stumble out of the fortress together. Axes crossed in front of them. Somehow, it’s more heartbreaking when he finds nothing but pure, unconditional trust, as if Dream is willing to do this one hundred times over just for him. 

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” 

Dream only smiles. 

A sigh escapes him, reaches down to the pits of his lungs and brings with it dust he didn't know he was collecting. When it’s gone, he feels lighter. His shoulders tick a few degrees higher, and he smiles at Dream with resignation that doesn’t meet his eyes, muddied by grime and grit. “Alright,” he says, so quiet it’s a wonder Dream can hear him over the ghasts and blazes and wither skeletons, each one crying out in their own incomprehensible garble. “Only because I trust you too. Promise me you’ll be alright?” 

Dream nods and begins to remove his armour. 

George rushes to help him, easing burnt hands back down to his sides because Dream winces whenever he stretches too far. His breathing sounds horrible, raspy and coarse against a throat full of smoke haze. With every inhalation, his chest shudders. He pries the chestplate free and tries his best to ignore the way Dream flinches, fingers pressing too close to fresh burns. “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters. The wrist pieces are next, thin guards which curve perfectly to Dream’s forearms. 

His cloak is singed to tatters, but he removes it anyway. George pulls the tools and weapons free from his body one by one until they cascade across the floor in a cacophony of sharp edges and gleaming blades. The crossbow comes last, string quivering as Dream’s fingers flit free of it at the last second. 

And then he sits there, looking uncharacteristically small all of a sudden. Naked, without the shining metal and the mask to cover his face. 

George removes his iron and pulls Dream’s armour on instead, a little too big against his chest and arms. All the weaponry is heavy, presses him down into the earth with more force than he’s used to. He pulls the cloak over his shoulders so it hangs in shreds reminiscent of a death wraith. Swirls around his knees. Worst of all, the smell of pine and moss is detectable even under the charring, wrapping familiar arms around him in an embrace warmer than the sun. George feels dangerous with netherite dripping from his fingers. 

He straightens up with the sound of metal upon metal. Apathetic, cold smiled. 

His grip falls back to the hilt and the sword spans the breach between them once more. This time, the blade doesn’t shake, doesn’t tremor in the soft nether drafts. It holds true, poised above the place he knows Dream’s heart thrums in terror. “I’ll see you soon, won’t I? I’ll see you sooner than the sun travels across the sky.” 

“You will.” 

George can’t possibly bring himself to look into Dream’s eyes as the sword plunges into his chest. 

It’s met with no small degree of resistance, sinew and muscle and bone all fighting to keep the dark blade out. But he pushes until it slides true, sticks between cartilage and drives against red flesh. Protrudes from his back with petrifying clarity. His feet are soaked. Heat drips down his face in metallic tendrils. 

He knows it’s over when Dream disappears into a flurry of crystal, each one more beautiful than the last and shaped into miniature stars. Sharp leaves of a dried cornflower stick into his chest where he keeps it stowed, dehydrated petals plastered so closely to his skin he’s surprised it isn’t branded there permanently. If he looks close enough, he might see fingerprints which aren’t his pressed into the petals. His mind might conjure up the arm which belongs to those fingerprints, offering the flower beneath an ocean of stars. Kaleidoscopic flakes drift through his outstretched fingers. 

George turns away from the spot, eyes glazed over with something different, some uncanny hardness which has entered his gaze like a sword through the heart. He stands upon the precipice of hell as Orpheus did, teeth bared in anger and gleaming midnight strapped to his back. Falling from his fingers. 

George looks out at the underworld and swears he’ll claw his way from its detestable stomach with bare hands if he has to, tooth and nail.


	3. Free the End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please make sure you have creator's style on!

It’s raining when he tumbles back into the overworld. 

His hands collide with the netherrack which bleeds from the portal, slick with rain and crumbling onto his palms. As his hair is plastered in tight coils to his head, George thinks the grey skies and the lightning flickering on the horizon is fitting. A perfect contrast to the first time he’d looked out at this landscape, a blanket of soft blue and clouds holding all the sunlight he could ever ask for. Now there’s an ocean emptying over his head, dark yet somehow not heavy enough to wash the blood from his hands. 

George presses his forehead into crimson rock until the nether starts to fade from his mind. 

The rain is bliss against his skin after the dry heat which had choked him for another solid day once Dream flickered into rainbow shards and lines of code. It runs in rivers over the planes of his cheeks, collects at the point of his chin and beads in his eyelashes like morning dew. His neck feels rigid, spine stiffened into unyielding marble. When he lifts his head from the rock, the vertebrae grind together until he’s met with a resounding click. 

Dream. 

The thought alone propels him from the fetal position. His feet slide over the netherrack, slippery and reflecting every glint of electricity unearthed from the clouds with resigned loyalty. He’s observed by hollow sockets and red eyes which glow from the depths of the forest, but he pays the creatures no mind. Every last scrap of his focus is diverted towards the hut balancing atop the mountain, walls shaking under the pressure of the storm yet somehow maintaining resilience. Dream is within those walls. Awaiting the moment the door opens to signify his return. George has no intention to make him wait any longer than he has to. 

He moves through the forest like a flagging shadow, an echo of what Dream is. Nonetheless, it’s easier to avoid stray arrows now, and run arcs around where the undead linger and arachnids nestle in the trees. George deflects a few hits with his shield, battered beyond repair by the nether. Then he’s running ahead once more, gaze fixated on the mountain which juts out from the cover of the forest and presses cold white snow against a gloomy sky. 

Rain filters down through the canopy, dripping from slender needles to run icy tendrils across his scalp like pointed nails. The chill is swiftly warded off as he darts between the trees and the land begins to swell under his feet. Up and up, pointing towards a dizzying peak which creeps into his periphery. And as he gains altitude, the rain turns to glittering snowflakes. He’s reminded of the day he fell into this world, bare feet and an arrow stuck into his flesh. Blood staining the snow with crimson. Now he has netherite spanning his chest and forearms, loose around the edges because it wasn’t made to fit his stature. Now he has hardened eyes the colour of the mud which lies frozen beneath the snow. Now, his jaw is tensed and strength thrums from his core. 

It’s difficult to breathe by the time he reaches the shelter. The door is a welcome sight for his aching muscles and weary mind, drawn out thin as lactic acid pools in the cavities of his joints. Light filters out through the windows and casts patches of yellow onto the landscape. Overhead, lightning flashes across the clouds. Thunder rolls to announce his return. 

Splinters work their way into his palms as he presses them against the door, fingers tensed but unable to gather enough force and push it open. He has to stand there for a moment, gulping oxygen into his lungs until his chest stops heaving. His hair is soaking and the bruises under his eyes are glistening with rain. 

Finally, the door swings open with a squeal of rusty screws and neglected hinges. It catches upon loose floorboards and scrapes against the floor. He tumbles over the threshold and the door swings shut behind him with a dull defiance. A pool of water begins to grow around his feet as he looks frantically across the tiny room, over a dim fireplace ringing with quiet. 

What he sees taps at his heart like a mallet and chisel, the pieces falling down to rest in a grave of red flesh and acid. 

Sickly yellow eyes gaze at him from the far corner, red ringed and with arteries pulsating through the whites. Irises bleeding darkness into the sort of gold which looks stolen, all the lustre leached from it. Dream clutches a pillow George vacantly recognises as his own clutched to his chest, nose buried into it so the bottom half of his face is obscured. His feet are bare upon the sheets, paler than usual and mottled with tender pink scarring. 

“Dream,” he hears himself say. 

His feet are uprooted by the sheer amount of hurt thrumming in his veins, until he’s stumbling forward to kneel on the bed next to where Dream sits, curled in on himself with his knees against his chest. A dimmed gaze follows his movement. 

He knows he’s getting blood and ash on the sheets as he shuffles closer, but George can’t possibly step away to remove the armour now. Sheets can be washed, wrung out until they’re white and pure once more. George doesn’t think any amount of rushing river water is going to douse the pain from Dream’s mind. His hands stretch out on instinct, but he stops before they come into contact with scarred golden skin. Hesitant. These are the hands that plunged inches upon inches of wicked netherite through Dream’s chest, these are the hands that pushed him into the echo chamber of memory and forced him to relive the death a thousand times. 

“Can I touch you?” 

Dream’s voice is wrought with tiredness, hollow because he hasn’t used it in what might seem like millennia to him. “Yeah.” He pauses and allows his throat to adjust. “Yeah, you can. Just, can you take that off first?” He’s looking warily at George’s armour, smeared with ash and blood. Sand falls from the joins when he moves, each particle belonging to a soul trapped in purgatory. 

“Of course.” He stands up with feet which feel clumsy all of a sudden and wobble against the floorboards. Then he’s tugging the armour off, discarding it in a dark mass next to the door where it can’t dirty the rest of the room. His hands pull the tools free until they’re returned to where they belong, falling silent at last as the light gleams over them. The cloak flutters down last. It trails ash behind it, remnants of the fire which ate away at Dream’s flesh until new scars knitted themselves together atop the old. 

Dream’s chin is a perfect fit as it hooks over his shoulder. Their position is awkward, legs in the way because they’re crossed in front of them. Knees knocking together. George leans forward and grips as firmly as he can without pressing upon the scars, locks his hands behind Dream’s back as though he’ll never let him go. He doesn’t ask if Dream is okay. He’s not stupid. 

“There was a moment,” Dream says. He sounds terrified even if his voice is beginning to relax, climb in a steady crescendo back to its normal tone. His hands squeeze harder until George is trapped against him, wrapped with equal parts warmth and melancholy in a cocktail of juxtaposition. “I worried you wouldn’t come back at all. That I dreamt you.”

George curses under his breath. His hands run in lazy circles over Dream’s back and his fingers brush over the ridges of his spine. “I’m here, I’m here,” he repeats in a low croon. He hopes the warmth of his breath will make him seem real. The pounding of his heart freed by the absence of a chestplate. 

He thinks it hurts because next time he’ll be leaving for good. 

Neither of them say it as George disentangles himself to set a fire in the hearth, and the words hang between them, heavy and depressive. It’s freezing in the room. He wonders how long Dream has been taking refuge from the biting air under covers which smell of him, a pillow clutched to his chest instead of a lithe body. 

Orange bursts from the flint and steel, flickers across a precarious arrangement of firewood which he’s set with deft hands and a tongue peeked out in concentration. Warmth immediately floods over his face so he’s reluctant to back away from it and return to bed. He straightens up after an elongated moment, leaving the bristling flames trapped in their cage of a grate. 

“I need to wash this shit off,” he says. A hand waves over the blood sticking to his skin, the dried sweat and tears which streak over his face in unflattering trails. 

“It’s too dangerous.” 

He supposes Dream is right, the clouds are dark and provide a perfect recluse for hostile creatures to dwell beneath. “What am I supposed to do?” The feeling is detestable, makes him feel as though he’s brought a piece of the nether back with him to torment Dream. Stinks of it. Fragmented whispers cling to his clothes and clotting blood clumps his hair together. 

As always, Dream seems to be able to read him. “Don’t worry about it right now, come back. You must be exhausted.” His sentence halts too early on the uptake of breath like he stops himself at the end. 

It’s easy to forget about the blood and grime when he allows the bed to take his weight, sheets dirtied around the outline of his body. Like something parasitic is creeping from his pores and turning everything in its path to seething black. But then fingers are pressing into his back, dipping under his neckline to ease at the gnarled roots forming over his muscles. 

“I’m so relieved,” he groans. His voice tumbles like the rocks lining the bottom of a volcanic lake. 

Dream hums. “I’m not surprised. The nether isn’t exactly forgiving. But you’re back in one piece, and that’s all that matters.”

George doesn’t like to think about how many pieces Dream must’ve been shattered into. He doesn’t think sticking him back together with gold coloured adhesive is ever going to make it go away. “”Missed you,” he admits after a moment. 

He knows Dream is smiling because he’s learnt to listen for auditory clues over visuals. “I missed you too.” 

When he drifts into slumber, George shoves the peculiar tone of Dream’s voice far out of his mind. He hopes it washes up on a distant shore, dead and broken. He’s beginning to notice things which are dangerous, which only spell snapped heartstrings and trouble when they’re forced to dive into the void. 

It’s easier to tune into buzzing static. 

He’s prematurely tugged from his sleep by fingers gripping at his wrists tight enough to bruise. 

George winces and attempts to pry the vice-like grip from his skin, but Dream’s hold is as unrelenting as iron. Hot enough to burn, tan against pallid complexion in a perfect eclipse. It’s damp where they meet, clammy and weeping. Dream’s brows are knitted together as though by metal pins hammered into his skull, sending scalding pain across his scalp until his cheeks flush red and his eyelids twitch with restlessness. 

“Dream.” His hands reach out despite their flesh bonds to grasp at his face. Hold it tight, a sharp jawline against soft palms budding with the beginnings of flat round calluses. 

He’s rewarded with a groan dragged from the depths of sleep. “Dream,” he calls again, this time pressing his thumbs into marred cheeks so as not to startle him. 

Golden eyes are revealed, glinting under the moonlight and swimming with an aquarium’s worth of water. They’re blown wide with panic, and his pupils jitter a little as he looks around the room. George watches as he focuses on each item with defined concentration. There is the door, next to it hangs his cloak, burnt and frayed as it is at the edges, and on the floor resides his decrepit bookshelves. Each one seems to ease the iron encasing Dream’s chest, ease it off as a bear trap swings open and jagged teeth retract from bloody flesh. 

Until he’s gripping at his hands again, hot and cold meshing together. 

“Put it out,” he says, knifelike.

George feels his brow furrow in confusion. Dream’s grip is almost painful. “What?” 

Dream’s hands cover his face so the pools of gold slip from view, replaced with skin which flows over raised veins and dips under angry scars. “The smoke, it’s too much, feels like my head’s full of it.” 

And it clicks in George’s head. 

The floorboards bite at his feet with frigid teeth when he stands, drafts blowing up to caress his heels. Then he’s crossing the room in two hasty steps and his arms reach for the cold bucket of water they keep next to the fire. Just in case. He’s glad of it now, glad of the way the metal is reassuring and cool against his palms. 

The wood sizzles as he upends the water over it, a cloud of steam rising in place of flame. In an instant, the hearth is plunged into darkness and the room is lit by the solitary light of the moon. When he sets the bucket back down, it rattles before coming to a still. 

Cold blows over his limbs now that the heat source has been removed, and he hurries back to bed with arms crossed over his chest. The blankets scratch at his skin as he worms his way under them, but they trap enough air between each layer that the room temperature becomes bearable. And Dream’s hands are warm against him, pulling him closer until he stops shaking. “You must be freezing,” he says quietly. His eyes are full of guilt, enough so that George feels his heart squeeze. 

“Nah, s’okay,” he replies, although his teeth click together halfway through. 

He doesn’t want to think about how cold it’ll be tomorrow, when the room isn’t heated for several hours beforehand. How cold it must’ve been while Dream was waiting to wake up, body reforming atop familiar sheets and with a mind full of down. Perhaps he didn't feel it. Dream is oddly warm, his skin seeming to run several degrees hotter than George’s icy hands and icier soles. He pulls closer even though it reeks of the sort of danger which appears in foreheads pressed together and an abandoned mask lying in his lap. A cornflower presented under a sea of diamonds. The sort of danger which makes his stomach feel like it’s flipping over, capsizing so he loses a piece of himself to the terrifying depth that is Dream. 

“This doesn’t happen very often,” Dream admits. “It’s more like...all that time we were in the nether was chipping away at some part of me, even if it didn't seem like it. It takes an awful lot of chipping before that part crumbles, and the final blow is always something stupid.” 

“Like the fire?” 

“Like the fire. Or the smell of woodsmoke, or dirt when it crumbles, or the wolves when they unleash their anger upon the moon. I don’t know why.” 

George’s fingers run over his forearms, delicate as they trace every faultline. Kissed by the moonlight. “It’s not stupid. It’s not.” 

Dream smiles up at him, although his eyes remain cold glass crystal balls. “I’m happy you’re here,” he says simply. And then their hands are pressed together and it’s so, so dangerous because George feels warmth branching from the touch and molten rock bubbling beneath his skin. 

Yet he doesn’t pull away when he mutters a _goodnight, Dream._ He doesn’t pull away even as the moon drifts out of the sky and the sun begins to take its place, content with the slide of their skin and their legs tangled like the confusion swirling in his mind. 

George doesn’t want to leave Dream here alone, especially since he can still feel the ghost of palms pressing into his own, fingers gripping his hands tight as he fights the roiling flames consuming his mind. He hesitates as he stands next to the bed, bottom lip worried to deep red by sharp incisors. It’s rare for him to be awake first, to see the sun spreading its cold rays over the forest and igniting the creatures who linger within it as though doused in gasoline. Bright as the stars. But now he can gaze down at Dream’s face from where he stands beside the bed, tanned forehead lined only by mottled scars instead of tension and misery. His limbs seem looser and splay out with the sort of awkwardness he’s not used to seeing adhered to Dream, and his fingers curl into cotton rather than around a phantom axe. 

He won’t be long. His skin is saturated with ageing perspiration, souring every minute he stands gazing down at Dream in deliberation. Dried blood matts his hair and dirt forces itself further and further into the crevasses under his nails. Forms crimson rings in the whorls of his fingertips. George is desperate to wash away the grime, to scrub his limbs until they’re flushed pink with blood from the heart rather than the chasms of hell. 

Dream’s chest crests and falls as certainly as the wind carries summer pollen. The only evidence of George’s temporary absence will be hair darkened by water and a dampening pillow. Sheets cold against colder skin. He’ll be back before Dream even realises he was gone. 

It’s this that convinces George to take a decisive step over the threshold. 

The door swings shut behind him with a metallic click, dark spruce wood colliding with the splintering jamb in one graceful arc. Frigid air gusts over his skin and tugs it to gooseflesh. A blue haze is thrown over the valley like a childhood blanket; clean, familiar and full of enough warmth to ward off even the coldest of nights. It seems as though the trees are breathing and whispering among themselves this morning, delicate needles tipping about in a gentle frenzy under the breeze. Snow is lifted from the peaks and drifts through the atmosphere to stick to his skin, freezing against red cheeks. Below him, the forest bursts with glitter. 

He thinks the warmth of the spring against his skin eases the guilt. 

It rushes over his limbs with a steamed embrace, hot and fragrant as the mist swirls only inches away from his face. He submerges his head in the water for a second, forces his eyes open despite the stinging so he can see the morning light refracted against bruised rocks and eroding slate. When he breaks the surface, the air is freezing against bright skin once more and pulls stuttery breaths from his lungs. 

George takes his time working soap into his hair, fingers pressing in tight circles so he can pry the dried blood from his scalp. It flakes off under his nails in patches of brown, like the rust which forms upon iron when it’s left out for the elements to claim and rain to ruin. The water becomes cold upon the sections of his skin which sit above the water and sends subtle shakes over his body. He doesn’t mind the shivering. It’s exhilarating. 

Still, the warmth of water pressing against his cheeks is extremely welcome when he ducks back under the surface. His limbs feel weightless down here, propelled by warm currents and guided with glittering air bubbles. A halo is formed around his head. George never thought his hair or eyes were very special, but he thinks he can understand what Dream means when he says it reminds him of the earth revealed by melted snow, secure and promising Spring. 

The water ripples against the swell of his cheeks, surface reaching just below his eyes. Time seems to tip about languidly until his fingertips are wrinkled and his limbs feel all disjointed. Like he can’t remember how joints are supposed to work as the water fucks with his perception of gravity. 

He does a double take when he notices a figure standing a few metres away, tall and shadowy as he looms from the mist. Dream has corded arms crossed over his chest, exposed despite the biting air. George plants his feet against the bottom and stands so his torso slips free from the spring. 

“Dream, I’m sorry, I didn't want you to wake up before I got back-” 

“You’re scared of water,” Dream interrupts. He sounds breathless, oxygen stolen from his lungs too early and pushed into crude words. It sounds as though his tongue races ahead of his mind. “I’m here now, shit, you should’ve woken me. I don’t care. Are you okay?” 

George swears he can feel his heart stutter against the bow of his ribcage. The pool laps at his waist, rises against a pale expanse of skin until it’s painted red. “I’m not scared of the spring, I promise. It’s warm and I can see the bottom-” he moves his hand around beneath the surface, demonstrating the way pale fingers remain plainly visible even under their watery cover. “-and there aren’t any waves to push me under. It’s nothing like the sea, really.” 

“Well, I’m not scared of the fire either. And yet,” Dream says. Trails off as if he’s not sure whether he’s overstepped. His silhouette looks all wrong when he’s only dressed in sleeping clothes, limbs softer and more golden when they’re not offset by wicked black netherite. The arch of his shoulders is narrower, seems more natural now it’s not straining against the weight of a small weaponry’s worth of tools. George loves it. Loves how human Dream feels, with a face he can read and hands which secretly prefer turning aged book pages over slashing blades through thick skulls. Eyes made to be admired like the stars themselves. 

George watches as he shuffles his weight from one foot to the other. His gaze is pointedly fixated away from the pool, away from pale skin and dripping hair and a nose tipped with rose. “You should stay,” he says. His words taste of knowing. “I don’t mind.” 

As soon as he’s said it, Dream hurries to sit down beside the pool. It’s endearing to George, how his back presses against a plane of exposed slate and his bare feet push their way into the heather. Lilac between his toes. He’d seen Dream as something of a god once, omniscient and wise with a face eroded by walking the earth. Now the illusion is expelled, he seems touchable, warm skin hovering just out of George’s grasp because the only thing stopping him from closing the gap is his self control. 

“We can go to the stronghold soon,” Dream says with his lips turned down. His fingers thread through the heather, pulling at tiny petals until his legs are decorated with purple confetti. “I know where it is, I know how to get inside. All we need to do is reopen the portal.” 

George crosses his arms next to where Dream sits and rests his chin upon them. The water ripples with his movement. He looks up at Dream, tries to decode what on earth is flickering in those golden eyes because he’s not used to reading them yet. 

“Dream.” His words are amber honey. “We have all the time in the world, you know?”

Dream blinks at that. Fingers still and drop back into his lap, discarding the frail petals until he’s only holding air. “Don’t you want to return home? We have everything we need already, I promise. You could be free of this wretched world.”

His heart shatters a little. “This world gave me you. There’s nothing wretched about it. Besides, you seem to be intent on showing me all of its evils instead of its beauty.”

Dream is looking at him when he answers. “Oh, I’m not sure about that.” 

And red _ignites_ George’s face, captures it in shades of pink which burn along with the heat of the water. He casts his eyes down to the rippling surface. “You’re such an idiot,” he murmurs. This is dangerous, creeping towards territory which looks more like crumbling brown mountain ridges instead of soft grass and warm foothills. 

Oddly, George finds a sort of thrill in balancing upon the precipice. “You’re one to talk,” he says in retort. Levels a challenging gaze at Dream. 

“Shut up.” 

George’s lips tug skywards and he watches pink spreading over the gaps between the burns. Dream can give and give and give, but he seems to crumble as soon as George takes the bait and turns the same energy back on him. It’s amusing to George, makes a bubble of helium swell up inside his chest with glitter and woodsmoke. 

He drags the soap over his skin until it smells of pine and allows Dream’s words to settle into his brain a little better. 

As much as he tries, George can’t bring himself to be excited about the prospect of returning home to grey sheets and morning light cast upon land which has a name, a relevance. Here it feels like they own the world, everything they own hewn from it and shaped by their own hands. Perhaps that’s why they’re so novel to each other. 

And the memory of Dream, gasping for air as though his lungs were replaced by gills still remains in George’s mind, the imprint of fingers around his wrists fresh and visceral. He can remember the muddied water of golden eyes as bright as day, the lips bursting with crimson and a sheen of perspiration layered over a scarred forehead. Hair dripping with it. Dream can pretend all he wants and hide behind heavy plates of netherite, but George knows he’s not ready to face the horror of the void. Not yet. 

“Let’s wait a little. You need to heal, you know.” 

Dream’s brows pull together in confusion. He holds his arms out and tugs his neckline down so the top of his chest is plainly visible, gold streaked with pink and perfect enough to squeeze at George’s throat. His voice is quiet and subdued when he speaks so it’s almost lost to the sound of the bubbling spring. “They’re healed. The regenerative process isn’t pleasant, but it serves its purpose.” 

“No.” George shakes his head with no real malice. Dream is hopeless, he thinks, a single track mind bent upon everything other than himself. “You need to heal here,” he says, and reaches up to lay a palm over Dream’s exposed chest. Water runs over the burns, rolls from bloodless skin to a soft tan in sparkling rivulets. Disappears beneath the arc of his neckline. 

His lips fall open in recognition. “You want to stay here for a while.” 

“Yeah. We can stay here until we’re ready, can’t we?” 

And suddenly Dream’s lips are pressing to his cheek, so soft it feels phantomlike. He lingers for a moment so George can feel the heat emanating from him. Then they’re gone and his skin is as cold as it was before, chilled pink marble. 

“We can.” 

George submerges himself in the pool once more, water carding through his hair with gentle fingers. His mouth is full of it and air bubbles from his nose to flit back to the surface where it belongs. He looks at the motion and thinks maybe that’s him, yearning away from the dark ocean of the universe. When he crests the surface to gulp oxygen back into his lungs, he wonders if it tastes of home. 

“It’s freezing,” Dream says. 

He’s right. 

The sun no longer spreads its warmth over the land, and the mountain is plunged into a realm of stars and northern wind. It tugs at the house with gnarled fingers, ice stiffening the joints until they’re arthritic and sharp. Dream’s shelter is no feat of engineering, and the gaps between the boards drip with so much cold George begins to fear he’ll lose his toes to it. And if the cold wasn’t enough, his eyes strain as he attempts to see without the aid of the fire, hearth dead and tomblike. 

A blanket is wrapped around his shoulders, but still his bottom lip quivers. Dream seems to notice the way his shoulders rattle like pampas in a hurricane, and his eyes soften with guilt. 

“No, it’s fine.” His teeth click together with carbon resonance. 

“George, you’re shaking.” 

“I’m really fine,” he reiterates, but Dream seems less than convinced. 

He watches Dream as he stacks firewood within the hearth, arranges it with practised fingers until it resembles a miniature pyre. He doesn’t say anything. Not even when Dream sends a shower of sparks onto the wood with a strike of flint against steel. The flames lick at their fuel, push in gentle ripples upwards as they begin to flicker to life. 

Dream sits back on his heels, face painted with soft tangerine. 

Heat starts to emanate from the hearth, pushes the cold drafts back through the chimney and condemns them to the blustery outdoors. And Dream remains sat next to it, palms pressed against the floor and his head tilted forwards in inquisition. George thinks he looks smaller than usual, with his sharp edges melted to nonexistence by the fire and amber lowlight pooling in the divots of his collarbones. He can begin to imagine Dream before he came, years and years ago when his hands were soft and unlined. It’s not so hard to connect the two anymore. 

The floorboards are as uncomfortable as ever when he sets himself down upon them. His ankles press against unforgiving spruce, bone protruding from the swell of his skin until he’s sure it’s marked with red. George can’t bring himself to care when the fire is so kind to his aching joints. 

There’s a shuffling of paper and leather as Dream retrieves a book from the dilapidated shelves which lean against the wall. As if they’ll collapse without their haphazard symbiosis. It’s entrancing, to watch long fingers splaying flat over leather and rifling through yellowed pages. George looks into the turning pages and feels he may become hypnotised as though by a pendulum swinging between his eyes and casting sunbeam wherever it catches the light. 

“What’re you looking at?” He asks once Dream finds a page to reside upon for the next few minutes. 

He’s greeted with a low hum. “The dragon.” 

Dream’s told him about the ender dragon, tales whispered over steaming tea and between heavy blankets. He says it’s a thing of beauty, moving flawlessly between the void and the island because it knows how to command the currents of the universe. A guardian, of sorts. George isn’t sure whether the affirmations scare him or not. Sometimes he feels as though he can imagine what purple is like just because of how much Dream has described the thing’s eyes, indigo pools lying like amethysts in the middle of her dark skull. 

“Can I see?” 

A beat, and Dream is setting the book down between them. He rotates it so it’s facing the right way for George, and his fingers press the pages open. They’re washed by firelight. 

On the page a sketchy rendition of the dragon is presented, black jagged lines which span out to form its wings, its jaw, its spiked tail. It’s suspended above the island, and particle matter tumbles from its mouth to spew over endstone and bedrock. “Did you draw this?” He asks, surprised. The lines seem even rougher when he holds the image to the light, tilting it this way and that so he can look closer. Light seeps through the paper because it’s so thin, casts shadows where the fibres rise from it. Pulp runs under his thumbs. 

“Mmm,” Dream says. He leans closer so he can see too, and heat radiates from his skin. His hands are soft when he takes the sketch back. “I’m not any good at it.” 

“I like it.” 

He swears Dream’s neck darkens, but with shadows thrown over them like a gossamer veil, George can’t be certain. “So that’s the dragon.” Dream tucks the image back into the book so it slides against lines and lines of spidery handwriting. The words seem to crawl over the page, each character lacking uniformity. George wonders who’d taught him to write. 

“She looks beautiful.” 

Dream looks at him with a furrow between his brows. “Most people are scared of it, you realise.” 

“Why?” 

The furrow deepens. Then it’s replaced by a smile brimming with amusement accompanied by warm palms ghosting over the back of his hands. “You really are fearless. I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised, not after that godforsaken dungeon. Or the nether.” 

“You make it easy to be fearless.” George shrugs, and the movement makes Dream’s gaze dart down to his chest. He stares, eyes snagging upon his collarbone. George is about to ask what’s wrong when Dream leans forward and his fingers are brushing over the skin, leaving trails of embers and sparks in their wake. A shiver passes through him, and his nerves seem to stand on end, electrified with static. 

He pulls away, and the pressed cornflower is balanced between his thumb and forefinger. “You kept this?” The stem looks dainty in his hands, dulled petals a pretty contrast to his skin.

George’s neck feels warm, and it’s not entirely due to the fire. “It’s pretty. I like the flowers here. They’re much brighter than they are back home, like the air really makes a difference. And you gave it to me, so…” he trails off because it feels as if he’s about to combust. 

The flower twirls around and around like a pirouetting ballerina. It falls against Dream’s palms as a feather might, soft and weightless. At the same time, it seems to hold immeasurable gravity, its tiny petals cupping constellations and crackling vinyl as it spins in a jukebox. 

“I can show you more,” Dream says. “Tomorrow. We can go look at the flowers.” 

His heart melts into a mess of sugar and dandelion. “I’d like that.” 

And the cornflower is tucked back against his palms, hands pushed to cover it by calloused fingers. The petals prickle, but George doesn’t mind. He clutches it tight enough that he’s sure it’ll leave a faint imprint. 

“That’s if you can wake up on time,” Dream teases with his lips parted to reveal his teeth. 

George whacks at his shoulder. “Wake me. I want to see the flowers.” 

He steps out of the shelter with his arms stretched over his head. They strain in weary lines, trembling with the tension. When they drop, relief floods over his nape. 

It’s far too early, the sun only just beginning to crest the sky. The fog is tinted the sort of blue it only achieves at the very start of morning, when moonlight still clings to it and washes everything in pearlescent white. Turning the clouds into oysters, tight and unyielding. Sleep sticks to him, rises up in torrents every time he so much as blinks. But the bite of mountain air clears the haze somewhat, pushes the darkness into a far corner of his mind and sweeps across his tongue until he can taste dew and river water. 

“This way,” Dream says before heading along the ridge. 

It’s not so difficult to keep up these days — his feet have grown accustomed to off camber ground and slate which crumbles each time he steps upon it. As they travel along the precipice, George is surprised he has time to cast his gaze out over the valley. His footing doesn’t falter, even as it teeters on a knife’s edge cleaving the world in two. 

They travel in comfortable silence, only the quiet conversations of the breeze and dawn coloured birdsong to keep them company. His hair is whipped up into an earth-toned halo, flyaway strands crossing over his forehead in soft waves to frame his face. The soles of his boots become muddied. Swamp water seeps into his clothes once they’ve descended the mountain, spreads dusky grime over his skin until he’s outlined in shades of green he can’t see. Mosquito bites dot his arms. 

This world doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to an outsider like George. 

Landscapes seem to be cobbled together with little cohesion, glaciers and deserts punctuated with cacti meshing on the horizon in uncanny coexistence. It’s snowing in the West, but when he looks South, George sees only gentle sunbeams and silkworm clouds. The temperature seems subject to flipping over with every new environment they come across, drips down into freezing and back up to July heat whenever it chooses. Like the land has a mind of its own. George can imagine that — mountains forming the bones of something living and moss knitting together in an imitation of flesh. He wonders if Dream thinks of it as _Mother._

“Not far now,” Dream says when he senses George opening his mouth to ask. 

It’s poetic, how their minds seem to work in harmony. Even if they’re from worlds separated by the tides of the void, Dream and George seem to fit some hole in each other’s chests. Perfect and interlocking. 

His back dampens as they forge up low rising hills covered in rejuvenating blades of grass. George reaches down to pull his boots off now they’re not wading through swamp and avoiding sinkholes, and revels in the feeling of damp earth against his soles. Dew beads upon his ankles as he rushes up the slope to regain his place at Dream’s side. 

He resists the urge to gasp aloud when the hills fall away into a flat plateau. 

Meadows span all the way to the end of his periphery and meet the blueness of the sky in a boundary that seems fantastical, hard to focus upon. The long grass is cascading with flowers, and even if he can’t see half their hues he knows they must be beautiful. It seems as though he’s stepped foot into an alternate dimension, one divided from the horrors of caves slick with blood and crimson coloured netherrack by a boundary spun from dreamsilk. 

“I said I’d bring you to the flowers.” 

George is vaguely aware of his eyes filling up, swimming with salt which tastes like Grecian seas and the sun beating down upon his skin. The contented kind. Because Dream’s brought him all this way, led him through marshland and over mountains and between dense dark oaks. He swipes at the tears with the back of his hand, dismissive. “You gave me millions,” he says. The words flutter like the butterflies darting between each budding head. 

“Come.” And Dream is leading him by the hand so the grass tickles their waists and silken petals glide over his wrists. 

He wonders if this is what Elysium might look like, soft swells of earth all but obscured by the rainbow of flowers. The clouds form tall pillars of marble if he squints, and the blue silk of the sky drapes between them as though to imitate the sea. Pistils drip with ambrosia, gold and intoxicating. 

He thinks they could walk for hours and he wouldn’t grow tired. 

His fingers snag upon open petals until they’re covered with dusty pollen which crawls into his nose and fogs his mind. He’s forced to sneeze into the crook of his elbow. Dream turns back to look at him with an amused smile. “It’s intense, right?” 

“Worth it,” he says, and blinks away the moisture swimming across his irritated eyes. “Dream, it’s so beautiful.” 

George pulls to a halt in the middle of the meadow, spins around a few times just so he can take everything in. Even without seeing the full range of colours it presents for him, he thinks the meadow might look something like heaven. Most beautiful, most divine part of this world. 

Dream follows him without much effort when he falls into the grass, vision painted bright blue as he looks up at the sky. Stems ring the edge of it in spiked vignette, each one pulsing in the wind like the dizzy thrum of his heart. Grass pushes between his toes. He throws his arms out and allows the tension to seep away into the ground until his chest rises and falls in unrestricted slopes. 

And the static seems to calm, swallowing him up with gentle arms so he can stand in the eye of the hurricane. It fills him with the smell of freshly mown grass, tangles of amputated driftwood shoved to the tops of beaches, swathes of granite dripping with gurgling brooks. Memories which taste of calypso and cloying citrus. Contentment swirls within his stomach, soothes the pool of acid until his head feels clear and unhindered. 

He’s not sure how long he lies there, butterflies ghosting over his cheeks because he keeps still as the dead. 

Dream breaks the silence once the sun ticks a few degrees higher and slides past its apex. His voice sounds as if it’s been immersed in mead, pulled out dripping and sweet. George feels the scraps of resolve he has left burning in the hearth occupying his chest. They flicker and singe, glowing embers which eat away at all the oxygen he stores in his blood. 

“Is this enough beauty for you?” 

George sits up even as flat leaves attempt to keep hold of his arms. His spine clicks with the movement as the vertebrae adjust themselves and relief washes across his shoulders. Yellow flickers over his vision as a bee lands upon his nose, fat with pollen. He smiles, eyes crossing so he can look at it.

Dream hides a smile behind his hand. “It thinks you’re a flower,” he says. 

He rolls his eyes as it flies off, stumbles over air thick with heat and the aroma of wildflowers. “Of course, I’m so pretty.” 

“Yeah.” Dream is gazing at him. 

His throat feels as though wrapped tight with wire all of a sudden, biting metal which tugs at his skin and pushes the sides of his trachea together. A tongue dry and swollen with silence. And they’re leaning closer as if magnetised, flowers brushed out of the way as his face gravitates towards Dream’s. They stop with the width of a mountain ridge between them. 

“You’re supposed to laugh,” he says, tone imploring and tipping about around the edges because he’s uneasy. They’ve been toeing this boundary line for weeks now, dancing around each other with the only concrete proof the pressed flower against his heart. “You’re supposed to act all annoyed, but you’re actually not because we’re friends.” The word sounds wrong, somehow. A mask pulled over the true nature of things, obscuring it in a web of false affirmations and the paperlike support of George’s attempts to convince himself. He doesn’t think that’s even possible anymore. 

Dream seems to know it too. “I don’t particularly feel like lying anymore.” He speaks slowly, tentatively. Pushing into new territory with careful force. 

“I thought you said we can’t do this,” he whispers, terrified of how his voice wobbles. What it reveals. 

He can see irises pulsing with halcyon gold this close up, as well as the individual eyelashes which frame them. They look straight into his without wavering, sun falling upon rich earth in order for something beautiful and pure to grow. Tanned skin dotted with a constellation of freckles and a map of George’s world sketched in rose pink. His lungs feel insufficient right now, as they struggle to push and pull air out of his body without stuttering. 

“I never would’ve seen you coming,” Dream says. His voice is softer than George has ever heard it, stuffed full of pampas until it makes his throat feel jammed. “But here you are. And all this time I’ve tried to keep you at arm’s length where it can’t hurt so much. But it does. It fucking hurts, and I’m tired of being selfless. The knife’s already there, what’s to stop us twisting it a little?” 

He supposes nothing can hurt more than a sword through the heart. Except perhaps falling into the void with a dozen _what-ifs_ hanging over them, nooselike and constrictive. Questions thrown ashore for the universe to keep and never reveal the answers. Until the grass grows over them, forgotten pieces of truth forever. Blue threads leading off into nothing, tangling together so they can’t possibly see what’s supposed to happen, what could be if they take and take and take regardless of the invisible scars it’ll leave. Dream’s already got the rope around his neck. George could have it all, find out everything he’s been wondering when night falls and he’s left alone with his thoughts. All he needs to do is step forward. 

He doesn’t even notice his vision growing hazy until Dream’s thumbs slip over his cheeks. 

“Why did we have to meet like this?” The sea wells up inside him, pushes against the membrane of his mind with brutal force and winds which whip his thoughts into salty haze. “Why couldn’t we exist in a more favourable universe?” Any other universe, be it riddled with hardships and potholes. 

“I would take weeks with you over an eternity of never knowing you.” 

George blinks the brine from his eyes so he can look at Dream. Really look at him, make sure he knows what he’s condemning himself to. But he should’ve known there wouldn’t be a single atom of him faltering, and his gaze remains steady and sun-coloured. Fuck it. George wants to have this, clutch it against his selfish heart so hard it becomes painful.

“Me too.” 

Dream’s lips are warm like the rest of him, heated by hours of sunshine and brittle earth reflecting the beams back up at his face. The world slips away as his eyes slip shut, tossing him into a realm governed by his lesser senses. For a while, all George can taste is the salt that drips over his cheeks, becomes caught between their lips and is swept onto their tongues. And then Dream is deepening the kiss and the ocean fades to an undertone, decimated by woodsmoke and ash. His head fills up with pine and citrus until he’s certain he can imagine what Dream’s eyes really look like, the colour of marshland and spruce crammed into a glass potion bottle he can never quite see. George thinks he prefers the idea of gold anyway. 

There are hands cupping his jaw, gentle as if he’s spun from the same petals which surround them and drift to settle upon their shoulders. A thousand cornflowers, just for him. He gasps at the slide of Dream’s tongue against his own, his chest welling up with so much feeling he thinks his heart may give out. And his arms wrap around him, pulling him closer until he can feel warmth more intense than the sun flooding his skin. Now they’ve started, George doesn’t know how they’re ever going to stop, how they’re going to pull away and tumble into a cold void where sound doesn’t travel and he can’t hear the way his name sounds upon Dream’s lips. 

“What have we done,” he breathes when he pulls away, eyes wide with terror. The oxygen he draws into his lungs tastes of clarity, and the happy bubble in his stomach pops until he’s left with acid and swirling horror. 

As always, Dream is there to soften his fall. 

“Don’t worry about that now,” he says, and his fingers splay against George’s thighs so he can’t turn away. “We have time together, time to do whatever we want.” 

He drags the back of his hand over his eyes. George is certain they’re red and swollen, but Dream is still looking at him as though he’s holding the stars. And he’s reminded of Dream’s voice at its most vulnerable, shaking as it utters — _I think it’s alright to be scared sometimes. Isn’t that part of being human?_

George knows the terror is his to control, a darkness which swirls in the cavity of his chest until it feels all-consuming. He thinks perhaps he can be strong enough to find the light instead. 

“Alright. Scare me so bad I forget we’re in this wretched world.” 

As certain as a stone cuts through water, as a mask drops from shaking fingers to bloodstained rock, Dream leans forward and pours his soul out for George. 

The days seem warmer now. They slip past in a sunset tinted haze, dripping with honey and the passage of time only marked by their hearts beating in sync. George can reach out and touch Dream whenever he wants, fingers pressing over skin as though it’s made of velvet. Gentle, loving. He thinks he might be addicted to this, to the way he’s woken with lips against his own and the smell of pine rotting in the centre of his mind until he feels so overwhelmed he may die. 

It’s so easy to fall into a routine, one punctuated with stolen kisses and skin brushing together in a juxtaposition of hot and cold. Water and fire rushing to meet in an impossible embrace. George grows alarmingly used to the feeling of Dream’s arms around him, golden eyes the first thing he sees when he wakes up. Alarming, because he knows he’ll have to learn to survive without it before long, and he doesn’t know if he can. If it’s even possible. 

George shoves aside the thought of grey sheets and walls the same colour as the pigeons which plague London. Shoves them so far underwater they can’t resurface no matter how hard they try to float back up, guided by air bubbles glinting with yellow magma and cold sterility. He finds himself forgetting the fake wood grain of his desk, the carpet worn to threads over years of being pressed under his soles. Sprawling suburbia and tea stained magnolia petals are swamped instead with spruce and warm foothills, spirited from his mind as easily as a dragonfly flits through the air. 

He pulls Dream closer just because he can, and his limbs are slowed by effervescent water. 

“What are you smiling about?” He’s never going to grow tired of Dream’s voice, clear as a mountain river as it rushes over limestone and granite. His hands rest against George’s hips and leave scorching marks where they connect. It still feels as though he’s imagining this, and every touch is part of a dream he never wants to leave. The idea of waking up is terrifying. Ice water washes over his spine every time he thinks too hard about it, seizes his neurons and leaves them emitting black particle matter. 

Dream tastes of minerals and salt when he kisses him. They smile into it, drunk on each other. 

“I’m happy,” he says honestly. His mind feels as though it’s been soaked in champagne. 

It’s as natural as breathing to be this elated when Dream is his his _his_ and they have as much time as they make for themselves separating them from the inevitability of the stronghold. Dark walls slick with moss and depositing water onto their cheeks. All of it is cast into the white static along with the life of a past George. Abandoned until it begins to fizzle out of existence, taking with it the blue numbers under his fingerpads and the fur winding around his ankles. He doesn’t need any of it. A ship could appear outside his bedroom window and threaten to take it all from him and George wouldn’t give a shit because his mind has been flung dimensions away to where he stands in the pool with his hands against a scarred chest. 

“I’m happy too.” And the day fades into the rest of them, all lined up in a blur for George to decode when he’s drifting to sleep in corded arms. 

“George!” 

His head fills up with linen and pine as he shoves his face further into the pillow to block out the morning light. A groan spills out of him, groggy and weighted by sleep. 

The bed dips next to him and fingers are running underneath his shirt, up until they brush over the delicate skin covering his ribs. Sliding over his stomach. He feels warmth spread from the touch like honey, easing over nerve endings with saccharine warmth. “George, wake up,” Dream calls, voice sounding right next to George’s head. His hands grip the pillow stubbornly. 

That won’t do, according to Dream. 

He’s turned over in one smooth motion, strong arms flipping him with ease so he’s ripped from his cotton recluse and forced to look up through the sea of dust motes instead. It’s all worth it when Dream’s face pops into view with his lips stretched upwards into a smile. Eyes captured by the easy light emanated by it. “Sleepyhead,” he says. 

His fingers brush through the dark strands of George’s hair until they’re sticking up in odd directions. Misaligned chaos. George reaches up to bring Dream’s wrist to his chest instead so he can’t make the situation any worse. Fingers wrapped around capable wrists with all the cold strength he can muster this early in the morning. He’s certain his hair forms a dark halo on the pillow around him, mussed beyond belief and with strands straying free from the rest. 

“I wanna sleep,” he moans. It’s far too early, if the cold light flooding the shelter is anything to go by. 

Dream shakes his head in endearment. He leans forward to press their lips together and George’s heart melts into honey toned haywire. The world will end before he gets tired of this, planet surface boiling to plasma under the intense combustion of the sun. Even then, standing at the edge of the universe, he’ll remember how it feels as Dream’s tongue slips into his mouth, the slide lazy and tender. A warm body pressing him down into sheets marred with lichen and sunbeam and limestone. Delicate bruises lined up the column of his throat in varying shades of blue and galaxy purple, sore to the touch and so so beautiful. His eyes cloud with joy as the world narrows to the two of them, only the sound of their breathing to illuminate this silent dimension. 

“Are you feeling awake now?” Dream asks as he pulls away so George can stare into his eyes once more. He’s smirking, cocky and self assured. 

“Hmmm, I’m not sure,” he says. Hands pulling at the sheets as he stretches the aches from his arms. “Might need to do it again?” 

Dream kisses the tip of his nose. He shakes his head in sarcastic disbelief. “Get up, you idiot. It’s snowing.” 

George rolls his eyes. “Um, hello? We live on a fucking mountain, it’s always snowing.” 

“No, it’s _really_ snowing,” Dream says, and George can tell he’s barely containing his excitement. He’s almost buzzing, eyes lit up with well tended coal and sparkling firewood. “You have to come see.” 

Another groan spills from him. His muscles are still in the weary limbo that follows a peaceful night’s sleep, hours of it wrapped up by warm arms and a chin tucked against his head. A heartbeat pulsing beneath his fingers. Dream doesn’t jolt awake so much anymore. Doesn’t reach for an axe under his pillow that he’ll never find, hidden away in the far corner of the shelter. He holds George to his chest like he’s formed with constellations and multicoloured nebula, each melding together in order to create something perfect. 

“But it’s comfy…” 

“George!” Dream’s voice is the degree of endeared exasperation he’s used to. “Snow. Now.” 

When George makes no effort to move, Dream makes the executive decision to pull him from his blanket cocoon. A whine builds in his throat as the draft rushes over his body, prying frigid fingers underneath the hem of his shirt and scattering bumps over his skin. His feet are even colder than usual, bare upon the floorboards. He wiggles his toes to bring some of the feeling back into them and watches with dull vacancy as they press into the spruce boards. Blood tips about in his head, not fast enough to pull him securely into the realm of consciousness instead of hazy dream. George feels dizzy, drunk on the sheer amount of love brewing inside his chest. Sparks singe the lining of his stomach. 

Now Dream is pulling more layers over his head, scratchy wool and flax which smell like firewood. A moth tumbles free from the cloak he secures around George’s shoulders, brown dead wings fluttering to the floor like a leaf shed in autumn. When his fingers knock against the dip of George’s throat, he has to swallow hard. Red blooms from the contact, spreading upwards to blanket his ears and cheeks in a rose haze. 

“Good to know I have that effect on you,” Dream says. He looks far too pleased with himself. 

“The snow! We were going to look at the snow!” 

George has to tear himself from the warmth in order to cross towards the door. A blizzard presses against it and wind howls through the swell of the valley until George is certain everything is covered in glistening white. 

Cold air buffers against his cheeks when he coaxes the door open. Snow blows over the threshold and melts in chilly puddles upon the floorboards. The mountain is obscured by a greyish haze and a thick veil of blizzard which rages with all the intensity of an inferno, dialled down into inverted degrees. His lungs feel as though they’ve been pumped full of frigid mountain air, arteries zinging with blue ice and crystalline snowflakes. They tumble into his hair like confetti, velvet white petals cast across dark locks. 

“It’s snowing,” he observes. 

Dream laughs until he’s wheezing, even though George thinks it really wasn’t all that funny. He seems to have that effect on Dream, tugging every last atom of oxygen from his lungs at the drop of a hat until he’s left struggling for air. And his gaze is bright, overjoyed now it’s unobstructed by the flat white plane of a mask. 

The snow seeps into his boots when he takes a tentative step outside, rushes over the top in a flurry of powdery cold. Another step, and George has both feet sinking into the snow. He can tell Dream stands silent behind him because his blood seems to soar with elation and his heart thrums harder against his ribs. George can’t remember when Dream had stopped being able to sneak up on him, his presence louder than words shouted from the top of the mountain. When he turns around, he’s greeted by the smile which makes up his entire world. 

They look across the forest together, eyes sweeping over the blanket of white which clings to pine needles and forms deadly tree wells ready to snuff the life out of them. He can see bleached skulls moving around within its depths. The forest is dangerous at a time like this, with the sun obscured by a thick cover of grey clouds which spare the night’s creatures from its fire. Nevertheless, the landscape is beautiful this morning, snow spreading beyond the highest peaks of the mountain to smother the greens and browns George has become so used to. 

When he turns to Dream, he finds golden eyes fixed on his profile, unwavering. 

“Is it often like this?” 

“Sometimes.” Dream runs a hand through his hair and a flurry of snow falls free. 

George hums in contemplation. “It never snows at home. If it does, it’s thin and melts within a few hours. And it’s gross anyway, dirty. Snow doesn’t stay so pretty when it’s trampled by thousands of people.” Pressed into tarmac with rubber and trundling engines. 

“Your home,” Dream says. “I wonder what it’s like a lot. I seem to tell you everything about anything and in comparison it seems like I barely know you.” 

“I barely know myself. I think that’s okay. That George is like a different person, an alternate universe version of me.” He smiles gently because he’s telling the truth, he doesn’t care if he can’t remember the names of his friends or the faces of his parents just yet because he doesn’t need them here. George can’t miss what he doesn’t remember. 

Dream reaches out to slip their hands together, two sets of palms pressed tight against each other. George has to tip his head up to look at him, and he loves it. 

“Your world sounds so noisy,” Dream says when the silence swells with comfortable stagnation. 

He supposes anything would be noisy in comparison to quiet mountains and foothills filled only with the murmuring whispers of long grass and heather. Stone as old as time itself forming the skeleton of the land. “It’s deafening,” he admits. George can barely remember a silent moment from his home, lulls diluted by the distant hum of traffic or the chatter of complete strangers. Sound bouncing off linoleum and filling up cramped tube carriages, destructive and abrasive. 

It doesn’t take a genius to sense Dream’s longing, the _I want to hear it,_ which threatens to spill from his lips. He doesn’t form the words. They stay locked up in his heart as impossibilities, claustrophobic and cramped upon the shreds of complacency he has left. To release them would be to ease the pressure somewhat, but Dream has always been selfless to George. Heartbreakingly so. 

“What about the other people you’ve met?” George asks cautiously. He studies Dream’s eyes just in case they darken with the sort of storm clouds which appear from nothing, conjured into existence by hot drafts and an unpredictable climate. Dream hasn’t really told him anything about those he’s helped guide back home, and George imagines it’s because the dull ache of loss flashes through his mind whenever he thinks about it. But they’re close now, in ways they’re not supposed to be. Perhaps he can dare to ask. “Before me, you said there were others.” 

Dream rubs the back of his neck with two fingers and a wry smile passes onto his face. “Some of them were um,” he pauses, wracking his brain for the right words. “...interesting. Some of them were the best friends I’ve ever had,” he finishes. The gold around his irises is pulsing with a melancholy amber, dark and burnt. 

“But none quite like you. You’re an anomaly like that, I could never have seen you coming.” 

Green fills his vision as he pushes his face into the junction between Dream’s neck and shoulder, cold tip of his nose brushing over a defined collarbone. His arms wrap around him with as much strength as he can summon, and he’s forced to stretch up onto his tiptoes in order to reach. Their hearts beat in unison. Dream’s arms slide over his sides as if by second nature until his hands are crossed over the small of George’s back, protective and solid as a smooth iron plate. They stand there while the snow continues to move in bleary spirals around them, heads bowed together and ice melting on their cheeks. 

“I’m sorry.” It comes out muffled because his face is pressed into a cloak which smells delightfully of spruce and smoke. 

When Dream laughs, George can feel his chest vibrating. He wants to cling to this feeling forever, stay locked in a stasis where the rift doesn’t exist and the George of his past can die a swift death. Cast aside into a roiling black ocean for the cliffs to claim. 

“It’s alright,” comes the reply. “Those memories make me stronger. If it weren’t for them, I’d be alone for real, wouldn’t I?” 

And George feels as though he’s drowning, gasping for air as the snow threatens to freeze the inside of his lungs. Tight and fractured. He wonders what would happen if they were to let the blizzard claim them, let it tug at their flesh until only their intertwined skeletons remain, bleached white as the ground beneath them. “Don’t forget me,” he begs with every scrap of warmth in his chest. “Whatever you do, you have to keep those memories, alright?” 

And their lips meet, even if only for a second. Dream’s thumbs press at his cheeks as though they’re spun from porcelain. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

And white is tossed over his vision as he tumbles backwards into the snowbank. It’s freezing, seeps through his clothes until it feels as though his bones are about to splinter. He’s breathless from landing on his back, all the air pushed out of his lungs from the impact. George laughs in disbelief, and snowflakes swirl across his skywards pointing face. “Dream!” 

Dream’s face appears above him. He’s smiling, and it makes his eyes light up. 

If he’s going down, Dream is coming with him.

He pulls Dream forward until he’s stumbling into the snow, hands flying out so he doesn’t end up breaking his nose. There’s white tumbling from his hair, sticking to his eyelashes and melting into rivulets against his skin. George openly stares as he sits up and his form is silhouetted by the iota of light being shed from the clouds. It appears ethereal when it’s offset by silver and pearl, casts a halo around Dream’s head as though deeming him the most important thing in the world. And who is George to disagree with the heavens? 

A handful of snow is expertly aimed at the back of Dream’s head. It meets its mark and explodes in a flurry of powder which sticks in his hair like magnolia petals. 

“George!” He whips around and George is met with a glare that’s warm from the inside. Ineffective. 

Laughter bursts from his chest and tumbles over the valley, fills up the sky until the clouds are bursting with it and more sun spills through their glacial cover. “Payback,” he says once he’s managed to stop giggling to himself. Despite himself, Dream’s lips are tugging upwards at the corners once more, endeared. “For pushing me into the snow.” 

“Oh yeah? I think you like it.” 

“Really.” George schools his features, although he doesn’t think he’s fooling anyone. He’s caught sight of how he looks at Dream, dumb smile reflected from the surface of the spring or the pane of glass protecting their blankets and bed linen from the elements. 

Dream nods. “Yeah. Someone told me a long time ago that this is what people in movies do.” He says _movies_ strangely, the syllable foreign upon his tongue. Straight from another reality. George feels his eyebrows raise more than he consciously commands them to do so. 

“What do they do?” 

“This.” 

And Dream is leaning in to push their lips together for the thousandth time, hot enough to blister in comparison to the snow melting against George’s back. He realises with no small amount of panic that no matter how many times he feels Dream smiling into kisses and gripping at his waist, it’ll never be enough. 

George thinks the atmosphere this morning resembles that of a cemetery. 

Their supplies are stacked up next to the door, ender pearls and food and glowing potions arranged by deft fingers and balanced in preparation. Dream has produced a tent from one of his battered chests, claiming the journey is best stretched over two days. They’ll need somewhere to rest before tackling the stronghold. 

This is it. The last grain of sand tumbles through the neck of their hourglass, clatters against the bottom with a metallic resonance which mimics the cocking of a gun. George stares down the barrel and wishes it’d be over faster. 

“Don’t worry,” Dream says. He fastens armour to George’s chest, tugs it this way and that until it sits how it’s supposed to. Next are the plates which cover his forearms, guards held in place by creaking leather bonds. “It’ll be alright.” It sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything, and they both know it. 

George’s lips press into a thin line as Dream attaches tools to him. He’s perfectly capable of doing it himself, but something in those golden eyes seems to stop him from taking over. Dream moves as though walking between headstones, the faces etched with the names of everyone he’s tumbled into the void with. Only to wake up in two different beds, returned home by the curious forces of the universe. His footfalls are light as ever, and it occurs to George that Dream paces as if treading over a plethora of graves. 

He shivers as a chill passes through him. 

“Let’s go,” he murmurs when Dream runs out of things to adjust, straps that have been tightened tens of times already. The trigger pulls. George feels some part of him crumple to the floor, spilling everything he has left to rot in the shelter. 

Dream steps back, has to, lest he lose his nerve and call the whole thing off. Keep George here forever as his memories come pouring back and the cavity home leaves in his mind begins to hurt. It’d be selfish. George wishes and wishes he’ll do it anyway. 

But then he’s pulling the door open and rain pours over the threshold, bringing with it the cold bite of reality. This world is aeons away from the field full of flowers, separated by what feels like a lifetime. More accurately, it’s only been weeks, but George doesn’t think he’ll ever feel sated with what he’s got, scraps of love which drip with dark blood and shrivel in his hands. Earth presses against his eyes. Grass grows over him. 

George’s last time at the shelter is punctuated with the door slammed shut by a tempest. 

How cruel, that the world would rain upon him as he walks towards its precipice. How utterly cruel, that it would rip the last fragments of beauty out from beneath his feet. Tear it from his mind and leave his memories bruised and bloody, smearing across the walls with bright crimson and attracting maggots to eat away at them. Until they’re full of holes, tainted and defiled. 

How thankful he is that the wetness adorning his cheeks can be passed as belonging to the clouds. 

George takes step after sodden step and curses whatever is up there with all of his decaying heart. 

They pause before nightfall, when their steps are weighted by entire oceans of water and their feet are sucked into mud. 

The forest provides shelter, covers the roof of their tent with gracious limbs so that it won’t be blown away by the gale. 

Dream manages to start a fire despite the blustering rain, pushes it under the cover of the forest so it can eat what little oxygen it has access to. George sits close to it and warms his hands with his palms outstretched. The occasional raindrop bursts upon his scalp with freezing clarity, runs over his skin until they’re rolling down his face like delicate tears. 

“I’m going to light up the area,” Dream says, a lantern swinging from his fist. He presses his axe into George’s hands even though he has its iron counterpart crossed over his back. When he opens his mouth to protest, Dream waves him off. “Just keep it, will you? I’ll be alright.” George believes him. 

“Okay,” he agrees. 

Then Dream is pressing their lips together for a fleeting second before darting off into the trees. The lantern jitters as he moves fluidly over the uneven ground, casts its light over exposed roots and low hanging branches which reach out to snag at his hood. George watches him until his figure blends into darkness, is sublimated amongst shadow so easily he begins to wonder if he was born from it. A sigh escapes him. 

He’s left with the rain pooling in his cupped hands. It’s started to fall horizontally now, and doesn’t whip at his face so hard it feels as if it’ll rip the flesh away and leave him with bleached eye sockets. A shiver passes over him — it’s beginning to grow cold. As the sun dips below the horizon, it takes with it the amber warmth he’s grown increasingly used to as they pass through agreeable biomes. They remind him of July bleeding into August, bringing with it the sort of blues that occur when summer is coming to a close. When the world of long nights is thrown into fantasy to be looked back upon years down the line. Never allowed to be a concrete truth. 

George’s feet sink into the moss as he stands, turns away from the dwindling fire so its heat caresses over his back. 

The air in the tent is kinder to his swathes of exposed skin, warmed by the gentle sunlight and offering cover from the rain. He slips off the clothes he doesn't need until he’s left with a good portion of his limbs exposed, unmarked and soft despite all he’s put them through. They lie in a sodden heap near the entrance. He rests his body against wool which scratches his arms and digs claws of irritation into his flesh, but he doesn’t mind so much. His mind begins to drift into a dreary state of rest, lulled by the thunder roiling overhead and the wind driving fat raindrops into the side of the tent.

Smoke clings to his hair, transfers to the bundled cloak he’s resting his head upon. George is relieved to find he feels numb with the static pulling at the edges of his mind, tugging until his thoughts slip out of coherency. 

Still, he’s relieved when the rain begins to ease, slowing until it falls intermittently against the fabric stretching over his body. It’s more bearable like this, when it’s not deafening enough to drown him in a haze of monsoon and bluster. He stares up through the cover towards where he imagines the stars are beginning to show themselves, blinking to life as they open their weary eyes against the withdrawing sun. Ready to illuminate the night. 

The sound of cotton drawing back garners his attention, and Dream is stepping back into the tent. His hair drips rainwater onto the floor, plastered against his scalp and rolling over his skin in gold toned streams. George’s throat tightens as he watches a droplet escaping beneath Dream’s neckline. He’s illuminated by the firelight and patchy sunset which streams in because the vestibule remains open. It washes over his own skin, spins his pale legs and stomach exposed by his shirt riding up with soft light until he thinks he doesn’t look so ghostly anymore. He isn’t sure if the warmth comes from the dying embers or Dream’s gaze. 

“Hey,” he says redundantly. 

Dream runs a hand through his hair and a haze of water is freed from its confines. “Hey.” There’s a tension simmering between them, amplified by the prospect of the stronghold on the horizon and the rift that’ll rip them apart. 

Rain scatters across his skin like shattered diamond when Dream sits beside him. He smells of petrichor today, and his irises hold entire lightning bolts within their centres. For a moment, he has to clutch his hands into fists to keep himself from touching Dream. Then he remembers he’s allowed to have this, allowed to pull him close for now. George reaches out and his fingers trace over his jawline, down between his collarbones and across the bow of his shoulders as though affirming he’s real. 

“What are you doing?” Dream’s lips tilt up in amusement. 

He breathes a sigh, and it sounds deafening now that the rain isn’t whipping against the tent. His hand drops back against his thighs, limp and defeated. “Just remembering.” Pulling the memories tight against his chest until they’re spilling from his arms like leather books and fragments of obsidian into a swirling pool of lava. 

Dream takes his hand and presses a kiss into his palm, gentle and slow. His lips are slick with rain. He’s looking at George when he does it, eyes clouded with stormy grey. “Is there anything else you’d like to remember?” 

His heart seems to beat fast enough to split, cleaved in half along the faultline Dream’s been etching into it over the last few weeks. He pulls Dream closer until his face turns blurry from their proximity and George’s forehead is dotted with water. 

“I want to remember all of you,” he breathes, and suddenly it’s difficult to do so because his eyes are slipping shut and there are hot lips against his own. Biting until he blooms with crimson. 

And as he lies there with Dream’s exhalations hot against his neck and hands which leave blue and purple moonblossom, George fights the words bubbling in his throat. Fights them because they’ll make this so much harder. Fights, because he knows once he makes them a reality he won’t be able to leave. 

So they’re pressed into Dream’s skin instead, mouthed over and over until George is sure he could recite his pensive mantra from the grave. 

_I love you._

Dream’s eyes are ringed with rawness when the morning dawns. George doesn’t think he would want him to notice. He pretends he doesn’t. 

Armour is fastened to limbs and stretched across chests with quiet hands, only the sound of rustling fabric to punctuate the actions. The blade of his axe rasps when he slides it into position across his back, drags against dented iron with cold resonance. His teeth tear into the bread he’s taking periodic bites from. He chews and it tastes like wet sand in his mouth, flavourless and gritty. It’s taken George far longer than necessary to get through the thing because every mouthful makes his stomach flip and bile rise up to lap at the back of his throat. Still, Dream insists he eats. 

Water rushes over his tongue and washes away the taste of acid. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand before stretching to his feet. 

“How far is it from here?” He’s not certain he wants to know the answer, but the silence presses too hard against his eardrums. 

“Only an hour or so. We needed to rest, but it’s not far now.” 

“Alright.” Even though it’s anything but. 

They work together to pack everything up, folding fabric until it all fits into Dream’s arms. He stands there for a few seconds with it tucked against his chest and surveys the trees lined up in front of them. His expression is pensive, vacant of the storm George knows swirls behind it. 

Then he’s securing the tent in a hollow formed by exposed tree roots, freed from the earth to stretch up in the hope of reaching the sky. How futile, George thinks. The fabric flashes cream before disappearing into the cover, protected somewhat from the elements by the low hanging tree canopy. Dream straightens up and stares back down at it for a few seconds, and George wishes he could see his face because the rigid line of his shoulders is impossible to read. 

“I can come back and retrieve it,” he explains. “When-” he trails off, but George hears the words bouncing around against the dark cliffs lining his mind. _When you’re gone._

“You could travel for a while,” he suggests. He fears the sheets will still smell of him, the bed will still have an imprint the same size as his body left in the middle. George can imagine Dream sleeping upon unyielding floorboards to preserve it. 

“Travel?” 

“Yeah, surely there are parts of this world you haven’t explored yet. You could find more oceans and marshlands and meadows than you know what to do with.” 

Dream turns to him with a melancholy smile. “I’ll be alright, you know? I will.” 

“I know.” And god, he does. He’s known since he plunged the sword into Dream’s heart, watched the life flicker from golden eyes and be pieced back together just because he willed it to. He knows because Dream is gentle despite everything, drags in strangers over his threshold and offers his bed when they’re bruised and bleeding. It would be easy for him to leave this all behind, lock his door and pretend his existence is one of solitude. But he doesn’t, and George believes he’ll be alright. “I still think you should do it. For me, if anything.”

‘For you, huh?” Dream runs a hand through his hair, nails scratching against his scalp. “Are you prescribing me with a _vacation?”_

George stifles a laugh. “Who told you what a vacation is?” The word feels foreign in his mouth, Americanised. 

“Oh, you know. Someone.” 

“Someone.” George sounds as unimpressed as he feels. 

“The same someone I have to thank for all of this,” Dream says, and now he’s stepping forward as if returning home. His thumbs are careful against George’s cheeks, but they always are. He can feel the way his blood thrums in his wrists, pushed by a stuttering heart and electrified by the ache of bruises covering his neck. Dream runs his fingers across them, over the dip of his throat with a pressure light enough it doesn’t sting. Calculated and considerate. “I remember everyone, you see. I’ll remember you most.” 

George’s fingers come up to rest atop of Dream’s. Holding them to his skin. “Most.” It tastes of rosehip and honey, warms his mouth and sets a jar of fireflies free in his chest. 

“Most.” 

The descent into the stronghold reminds him of their cave, glittering with the promise of iron and containing every iota of their innocent laughter. He thinks if he were to return to that cave, it might still ring from the walls, locked up in a stony embrace forever. It’s comforting. Even if it seeps from his mind, George can feel confident something is going to remember them, and evidence of their time together will stay trapped beneath the earth in a warm bubble of helium. 

Unlike the cave, the stronghold does not bear witness to their laughter. 

They enter it with downcast faces, lips pressed into matching lines as they descend the staircase. The only noise is the crumpling of undead flesh to the floor, the skittering sound of bones each time George sends an arrow through a bleached-white skull. His footsteps have grown quiet, barely a whisper of what they once were, and muscles pulse under his skin, built from lithe sinew and weeks of pulling at bowstrings. Hefting an axe which would’ve once been far too heavy for his arms. Now he doesn't falter, and his eyes are iced with apathy. 

“This way,” Dream says once they’ve cleared the entrance staircase. He turns into a corridor lined with iron bars, illuminated by the torches blazing from the brackets mounted upon the walls. 

“Freezing down here.” He pulls his cloak tighter around him to ward off some of the cold. It’s stored in abundance within the stone bricks, packed into flagstones and raring to turn his lips blue. Not even the back and forth motion of his axe can keep him comfortably warm, and George finds his limbs trembling with a cold that’s become far too familiar for his liking. He can see Dream’s trying not to laugh at him. “You’re such a dick,” he mutters. 

“Is that why you like m-” 

Dream is cut off as George drives an elbow into his stomach, hard. 

He’s busy hurling protests at his back as he walks ahead, crossbow languidly clutched in one hand. The torchlight reveals empty rooms, cells with tiny spiders creeping from the cracks. Their eyes glow red against the darkness, offset against navy bodies. They seem to grow bigger as his eyes follow the trail, until he can just about make out one the size of his face stretching its legs against the ceiling. George isn’t sure he wants to know where they’re coming from. 

The life leaves his body for a split second as Dream exhales directly onto the back of his neck. 

“Dream! Fucking hell,” he says once he’s whirled around. The skin covering his arms is tugged until it’s prickly, and phantom legs dance over his nape. He squeezes his eyes shut but it only seems to amplify the sensation until he’s practically crawling with unease. 

The sound of Dream’s laughter is stupidly loud against the flagstones, echoing with perfect clarity until George is certain the entire stronghold is full of it. He watches, unimpressed, as Dream struggles to pull oxygen into his lungs. “Yeah, ha ha. It’s really not that funny.” Regardless, a traitorous smile begins to creep onto his lips. 

“Yes it _is._ You literally died and resurrected, holy shit.” 

“Can you shut up?” His words are deemed ineffective by how soft they sound. “We have a portal room to find.” 

Dream’s lips are hot against his forehead when he presses a chaste kiss to it, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. “To be clear, we’re not finding anything.” 

He groans. “Oh yes, how could I forget you know the stronghold like the back of your own stupid hand? It’s not as if you’ve mentioned it a thousand times,” he grates. Dream likes to think George finds his capability pleasing in some way. And just because it’s true, it doesn’t mean he has to admit to it. 

The portal room, unsurprisingly, is exactly where Dream says it is. 

They pass through a library, and the tomes seem to whisper to him as he walks by. More creatures lurk between the shelves, but it only takes a glimpse of bone fingers for his crossbow to snap up and an arrow to meet its mark in defiance. George looks down at his hands mournfully. All this skill he’s built up will be for naught in an hour or two, pushed aside as he readjusts to his world, his home. The dimension in which he doesn’t need to know how to fire a bow, how to cleave flesh from bone and drive a sword through gaping rib cages. That’ll be left to Dream, alone once more. 

This world is hard, cold, complicated, but George loves it all the same. He thinks he’s learnt to look for the light within darkness, even if it means sourcing it from his chest and pulling it out as one extracts gold from the deepest cave nestled in the depths of the earth. And that’s all it takes. The world becomes soft and warm, as simple as breathing.

A chill passes over him when they enter the portal room. Lava bubbles in the middle of it, but still George can’t shake the feeling that he’s been lowered into a freezing ocean. Dream tenses as they pass too close to the wells on either side of the room, but he doesn’t say anything. George only notices because they’re so attuned to each other. 

Silverfish crawl over the floor, darting into crevices between the bricks. 

“Eyes,” Dream says, and it takes George’s mind a second to catch up. He pulls the eyes from his person and presses them into Dream’s cupped palms. They glint with fire and mystery, winking as if to taunt him. 

“Why doesn’t it stay open?” He asks as Dream circumnavigates the portal and drops an eye into each opening. Four, five, six… 

The seventh slots in. “Do you really think that’d be healthy, to leave a connection to other universes here all the time?” 

“I suppose not.” 

Ten. 

“I was made from this world. I think sometimes it hurts when it’s open. Like it drags at a part of my soul.” There are eleven eyes in the portal now. The last one sits stationary in Dream’s palm, rolls over the lines as it begs to return home. He keeps hold of it a little longer, and George wonders how it feels, gliding against his skin for as long as possible before he inevitably has to let it go. “Maybe it’s worried I’ll escape.” 

The last eye heralds a crack of thunder, so loud George is certain he must’ve imagined it. 

But then he finds himself met with a curious sight, the sort of oddity he knows he’ll never see again. It’s difficult to look at the portal because it seems to evade him every time he tries, light bent this way and that, inverted as it passes across multiple dimensions just to reach them. Travels through layers of dreams, none more real than the last, separates itself from the universe in order to caress it and admire its beauty. George thinks perhaps they’re all real. To exist in the mind is to exist in actuality, isn’t it? 

The portal whispers with starfire and glimmering constellations spun into a map for them to look at. They stand atop the steps and gaze into its depths. It’s nothing like the nether portal, rigid and upright with heat pulsating from its shimmery veil whenever he steps too close to it. This portal is silent, deadly. There’s no grandstanding to be had here, only millions of miles of particle matter accumulating within the frame of it, ready to claim them. 

He looses a shaky breath. His palms are clammy, and an uncomfortable pressure settles upon his stomach so he has to resist the urge to bend over and clutch at it. 

There are fingers pressing into his own. There always are. 

“Let’s go kill the thing.” Dream’s eyes are hardened to the casual observer, but George has spent hours watching every minute differentiation within them. He can pick out the gentleness, the light reserved only for him. 

He shakes his head in disbelief. His bottom lip is seized between his teeth, and he smiles so hard it splits in two and blood bubbles at the seam. “You’re so violent,” he murmurs. 

“Ah, sorry, would you like me to be more poetic about it?” 

“Mmhm.” 

Dream already has one foot in the portal when he exclaims— “let’s go kill the motherfucker!” And the overworld bleeds to incomprehension for the very last time. 

George is surprised to find the island looks exactly as he imagined. 

They’re pressed against its surface with invisible guiding hands, surroundings bleeding out of nothing as they come into focus around him. He blinks, eyes readjusting to the brightness emitted by the pale stone under his feet. Acres and acres of it, stretching out to the tips of the island and cradling everything he needs to return home. It’s dotted with the same shadowy figures he remembers from the turquoise forest, endermen flickering in groups as they stare at the pair of humans. 

A lumbering black shape soars above them, wingspan inconceivable to George. The dragon spirals over the island with burning eyes trained upon them in contempt. Her maw gapes and an inferno tumbles free, spilling through the void high above their heads until it flickers out into nonexistence. Despite the distance, George feels heat upon the back of his neck. 

Huge spikes shove against the void, hewn from obsidian and flaring from the floor in an unnatural contrast. At the top of each one, a crystal gleams, suspended by an invisible force George can’t comprehend. They catch the light in mysterious ways, spinning so their facets blaze with starfire and violet sears itself upon the back of his eyelids each time he blinks. 

“You need to destroy them,” Dream says, pointing towards the columns. He ignores the dragon in the way only someone desensitised can. “One arrow is enough.” 

George feels his brow furrow. He tears his gaze from the dragon to look at Dream instead, and wonders how he ever became distracted in the first place. “Shouldn’t you do it?” He lifts the crossbow awkwardly in Dream’s direction. Dream never misses, and every arrow he fires meets its mark with impressive certainty. Surely he should be the one to destroy the crystals, send inches of steel and wood through their cores until the sky is painted with stained glass. 

But he’s shaking his head. He nudges the bow back into George’s hands, so he’s clutching at the body of it as a drowning man holds onto a shipwreck. “You’re a good shot,” he says. 

“Not as good as you.” 

“Darling, you are stronger than you know.” 

And with the heat of a hundred suns blazing within him, George lifts the crossbow and aims. Lets go of the string with quivering fingers and allows his gaze to flit after the projectile. 

The arrow arcs through the void and bounces off the top of the obsidian. George watches with a vacant expression as it clatters against the endstone, and the shadows seem to bend away from its disruption. He sighs. Another arrow is notched in the flight groove, the tip reflecting starlight across his fingers. 

“Aim higher,” Dream says once again, patient. He’s always patient, waits for however long it’ll take until George can do it himself. 

George levels the crossbow again, brings it up to his shoulders and nudges the end higher so it’s aimed slightly above the crystal. It blazes at him with undead eyes, spinning facets which remind him of puddles forming upon a forest floor and rain dripping from pine needles. Dream watches as he squints at the top of the pillar, desperately lining up the shot in the hopes that it’ll connect. 

The string snaps free. 

A hand slips over his eyes as the sound of combustion fills his head. Even with his vision obscured, George can see the flash of light between Dream’s fingers, blinding and pure white like the inside of his brain. Dream pulls away and his sight comes stuttering back to him. Black dots worm across the sky, put there by the force of the explosion. “That didn't seem healthy,” he mutters. His head rings. 

The dragon doesn’t seem to take kindly to this, her wings beating with renewed fervour as she spirals back towards the island. Dream is only just able to tug George behind the pillar closest to them before a spinning orb of purple smashes against the island. Dragon breath spills from it, particles scattering over the endstone and glinting with radiation. Toxic and lined with thorns. He holds his breath in awe more than anything, watches as the indigo haze fades to nothing, lost to the abyss. Tossed overboard so it can appear as the stars in another universe. 

“Only nine more.” Dream steps out from behind the pillar and the dragon returns to swimming in the darkness. 

“Yeah.” It tastes heavy upon his tongue. 

Now he’s figured out how to approach the height of the pillars, the crystals are easier to strike. He aims with steady hands, only loosing one or two arrows in order to send fragments of world matter tipping over the sides of the spikes. His eyes shut each time, blocking out the sparks of brightness which blink like dying stars each time he aims true. Arrow after arrow, until two last crystals gaze down upon him like eyes in the night. 

These spikes are taller than the others, rise up to imposing heights at either end of the island. The dragon observes him from her cover of darkness, claws pushing aside void matter to angle instead for his heart. George doesn’t blanch. He stands in the centre of the island so bedrock rises against his feet in marbled colours. 

He shoots. 

A crystal shatters with a clap of thunder, spreads its lightning out in angry purple crackles. And now there’s only one remaining. It calls to him, a siren song which bounces over the waves and bids him to return home. 

“Come here,” he murmurs, and sticks a hand out to pull Dream close. They stand shoulder to shoulder, George’s head only just reaching the bottom of his face. “I feel bad about hurting her,” he says by way of explanation. 

Dream laughs at that, and the sound eases some of the tension gathering in his joints. “It’ll come back,” he says. “When the crystals reform, it’ll come back.” 

“Fine, but I still don’t like it.” 

The last crystal detonates with an arrow guided by two sets of hands. Dream stays close even as his hands fall off the crossbow, ghost over his arms with trails of sunbeam instead. They’re surrounded by a shower of dragon breath. It sticks to their skin, acidic, until his eyes are burning and he’s stained all over with violet. 

“George, you idiot.” 

Dream pulls him into the shadow of a pillar and his fingers worry at the burns blossoming against pallid swathes of his skin. Endermen watch curiously, purple eyes obscured every now and again as they avert their gaze and flit through reality itself. George sees one pop out of existence and reappear metres away, crumbling endstone clutched in its long arms. “Doesn’t it hurt?” Dream smooths a thumb over one of the marks, coin sized and fizzling with electricity. 

“I didn't really notice,” he admits. Now he’s aware of it, he supposes the burn aches a little. It sends a dull pain all the way down to his bone marrow as blisters erupt and the softness of his skin is eroded to bloody flesh. But he’s numbed by the void, an anaesthetic of silence and dark swamping his throat and seeping in through his pores. Cloying upon his tongue. “The dragon,” he says with a groan. The void will wash away his wounds, bathe them in ambrosia and return him home unmarked. 

It’s this that sends him to his feet, pain forgotten as he narrows his focus down to the dragon. Notches an arrow. Fires. She cries out with fury as steel rip through a wing and leaves a small puncture behind, her flight path averted due to the injury. He ducks back behind the spike as another flurry of violet rages in a particle storm above the island, sweeps everything into its core and spits it back out with eroding edges. Only the obsidian is safe, older than time itself. 

“You’ll get it,” Dream reassures. “Aim for the heart.” 

George’s fingers still. The arrow is halfway into the crossbow, feathers still brushing against his palm. “Not the head?” 

Dream hums in affirmation. “You should know better than anyone what a direct hit to the heart can do.” 

He does. Without being struck where it matters most, how can anyone return home? 

Now he spends longer lining up the shot, glaring with point blank concentration as the dragon swims through the abyss. Dream’s presence is steady at his back, unwavering. He feels as though he could lose balance and be caught a split seconds later by warm hands on his shoulders. George would trust Dream to hold him over the edge of the island, grip him with clammy palms above the void until his head fills up with adrenaline and he can see his life flashing before his eyes. The tip of the arrow is equally unfaltering, resting perfectly still from the mouth of the bow. _Sorry,_ he whispers under his breath, entranced by the whirlpools of purple set into her skull. He’s loath to watch it fade. 

The crossbow snaps as the arrow tumbles free of it. 

It arcs through planes of nothing, cutting through black emptiness as easily as George falls into scarred arms. 

And pierces through a heart as dark as night. 

Purple erupts from its chest, bouncing over glittering scales until it falls in beams upon the pale yellowness of the island. It hurts to look at, as she’s eaten up by the light, but George thinks she deserves the respect of her death being witnessed. Hot white incinerates the flesh from her bones, bathing her in an orb of fire as the universe observes the loss of its guardian. It remains apathetic. It knows she will be reborn from the ashes, reinstated above the rift with fire brewing in her throat and wings billowing like satin under the current of time. 

As the light fades, he takes hold of Dream and walks towards the centre of the island in dull procession. It thrums with cold, much like the portal they’d tumbled through in order to reach this place. 

His feet spring free from the endstone, and now he finds his soles pressed into unrelenting bedrock. A column of it is suspended above the core, blazing with torches which light the way home. It’s uncanny, how it floats there. Held up by only the force of a million dimensions converging. 

George stares into the rift as it pulses, ripples with whispers of another universe. The surface is the sea under a grey sky, a dark pool tipping about in the bottom of a silent ravine. He thinks he’d rather fall into those waters a thousand times over this. Feel the tide enclosing him in a watery tomb. His pulse thrums wildly in his veins, but all of his fear is cast aside like chiffon as his soul yearns for Dream. Yearns to stay here, wake up with warm arms around him and the sun the only witness as their lips connect, over and over again with hot cheeks and glassy eyes. Red crescents adorning his palms. 

And the sea crests over his cheeks, brine and brimstone flooding his skin. 

“Am I going to forget you?” His voice sounds hollow, blown through a shattered conch so the sound escapes before coming to completion. 

Dream’s lips remain stretched upwards as he pulls George against his chest, brings their mouths together so gently it feels as though gossamer is brushing against his tongue. “Who knows,” he murmurs when he’s pulled away and George can get lost in the gold of his eyes once more. “I think, even if you forget my name, my face, I’ll still be here.” His fingers press over where George’s heart oscillates, as unwavering as dark netherite. 

Standing here is something like standing at the land’s end, toes curled over a cliff precipice so his skull doesn’t dash its contents against the rocks strewn below. Instead of stone bruised to black by the tide, he’s met with an ocean of stars stretching all the way to Elysium. His hands settle against tanned skin and his fingers trace over every line and mark, committing each one to memory so he can pick Dream out from the other constellations. As if he hasn’t already. 

“I don’t want to go,” he says. His world of greys and blues seems so far away, flung across to the other side of the universe where he can’t miss it. Here George feels as if he can see colours better, can conjure bright greens and golds in his mind as Dream guides him with calloused hands. He can imagine red and pink and fire as it consumes Dream every night, burning residual petroleum from his mind as he tries to forget. And George is there with a head full of water to extinguish all of it. 

Dream’s teeth are visible for a moment. “We have to. It’s the only way out of here,” he says, twin suns meeting the void. He stares in admonishment. 

He thinks about Dream, ripped away from him by the currents swirling through the rift no matter how hard he tries to hold on, returned back to his shelter overlooking a silent forest. Only a pillow to clutch, shaped all wrong with an echo of George’s scent clinging to it. 

Panic claws with iron nails at his organs as he fails to clear his vision, swipes shaking hands over his eyes so he can look at Dream properly one last time. The ocean beckons and surges within him. Their lips meet and it tastes of salt. Acid pools under his tongue, leeched from his heart as poison burns the delicate membrane lining his lungs. 

“I love you,” he chokes out. He wonders if Dream will hate him for it, for being selfish and removing the words like thorns from his throat. 

But Dream’s smile doesn’t change, and his gaze remains soft around the edges. Just as it always is, even when George wields a sword stained with blood or stumbles over the threshold smelling of death. When they stand back to back and face the horrors the world throws at them, or trace the grooves lining their palms until sleep rises up to claim them. And they’re moving towards the rift now, flame and sea pressing impossibly closer as the stars yearn to retake their matter. 

When Dream speaks, his voice does not shake or falter. 

“I love you because you are love.” 

They fall into the void and hold tight until the universe rips them apart.

* * *

* * *

His forehead is pressed into faux wood grain, plastic which sticks to his skin and is undoubtedly in the process of leaving an unattractive red mark. George groans, but doesn’t make any effort to lift his head. Weight presses down upon his shoulders, works its fingers into his bones until they feel rigid and misaligned. An ache is pulsing at the tip of his spine, stretching spindly crimson branches over his back. 

A yawn is stifled in his fist. He manages to blink his eyes open even though it feels as if they’ve been weighted by years of slumber. 

“Ugh, fuck,” he says as he sits up. The motion causes the blossoming ache to unfurl tight petals and bleed across the rest of his muscles. He shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes to block out the sudden affront of light and mourn the swift life of his posture. A draft flutters against his toes. His chair creaks under his weight and leather sticks to the exposed skin covering his thighs. 

“George?” A voice filters through his headset, dialled up far too loud for his weary ears. 

He exclaims and his fingers flit to the volume wheel, scrolling it down until the voices don’t make his head ring with white pain. George isn’t a stranger to falling asleep at his computer, lines of code forming repetitive waves which inevitably send him into unconsciousness. It never ends well, only in an aching neck and a spine which feels like it’s been molded into a permanent curve. Bowed over glowing keys with the world passing by, oblivious. 

Still, he doesn’t remember a time in which he’d felt quite this awful, with acid churning in his stomach and a tongue so parched it sticks to the roof of his mouth. He must’ve been out for _hours._

“Are you there?” His friend’s voice crackles with distance. 

He glances at one of his monitors even though it makes his eyes water. There are a couple of his friends in the call, icons lighting up with green rings every now and again because their mic sensitivity is too high. His eyes flick down to the time. 08:31 is displayed in the corner with apathetic white figures, announcing that he’s managed to sleep for a solid few hours with his neck bowed and clot building like limescale between his joints. Grey light filters in through the blinds, washes in soft waves over his room. A bright beam of morning sunlight is projected onto the wall through the gap between polyester and glass. 

Another yawn spills out of him. This one wrings the tension from his mind, eases it to hazy pulp unable to process much of what’s going on. “Yeah, I’m here,” he says. His voice scrapes against the ridges of his throat, gravel against soft knees, bloody and dry. “I feel like death.” The headset is verging upon the brink of pain as it pins his ears to his skull. 

“I’m not surprised dude, you’ve been gone forever. You should go to bed or something.”

A wry smile pulls over his face as he rubs his eyes, bloodshot and fatigued. Bed sounds fantastic, fresh pillows and sheets which cling to the smell of washing powder. “Yeah, I guess I should.” He doesn’t mind that the sun is drawing upwards in the sky, considering his sleep schedule is already fucked beyond belief — a uni habit he’s never really been able to shake. George lives in a dark reality, midnight suns and night creatures to keep him company instead of sun-warmed pavements and lazy midday traffic. Red hands ticking closer to morning. 

“Gonna head then,” he says, and he’s met with a chorus of well wishes which blend into each other, indistinguishable. 

The disconnect tone plays. His headset falls onto the desk with dull resonance, plastic clattering against laminate. 

He’s still logged into a minecraft server, so blocky mountains and spruce forests fill his other monitor in familiar patterns. In all honesty, George is surprised he hadn’t been murdered in cold blood the second his friends had realised he’d passed out on his desk again. Yet his character stands in the middle of the screen, armour intact and all his levels faithfully displayed at the bottom. His fingers reach for keys as easily as breathing and his left hand falls onto the mouse like it’s an extension of his arm. George thinks he might spend a little too much time playing this game. 

Despite his every whim yearning for much-needed sleep, George is unable to stop himself from fucking around on the server for a few minutes, sorting through chests he’s already ordered a hundred times and harvesting crops even though he has enough food to last _months._ It’s way too addictive, he thinks as another yawn is pressed into the crook of his elbow. He’s about to find more menial tasks to waste his time on when his gaze catches upon something a little out of the ordinary. 

There’s a cornflower in his hotbar, blue and unassuming. Huh. He doesn’t remember putting it there, but he supposes it doesn’t hurt and switches it to his offhand. Blue lights up the corner of his screen, a bright burst of colour which reminds him of flower fields and dyed leather boots. Swathes of unmarked morning sky and misty springs covered in veils of cloud, mysterious leather books and and and-

Weariness must really be tugging at him now, with knotted wire digging into his wrists and needling at the back of his neck. Twisting his thoughts together until he can’t tell far flung memories apart from images he’s seen on the internet. 

George dismisses the odd sense of nostalgia and forcibly removes his fingers from the mouse. His in-game character ceases movement. 

He’s reaching for the escape key when a message flashes in the chatbox, perfectly commonplace considering how many friends-of-friends and tentative acquaintances play on the server. Yet something about this message makes his lips tug up at the corners, until they’re stretched into a soft pink crescent and the whites of his teeth peek through the gap. Something he can’t quite place. When George wracks his brain for an answer and comes up blank, he decides the sleep delirium must be setting in with all the force of suffocating waters and bruising tempests. 

And so he logs out, but not before his eyes flicker of their own accord over the text once more. 

Dream joined the game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I lose all ability to communicate once I’m done writing, but I’m trying my best!! With punctuation!! (although I did just use !! twice, I don’t wanna talk about it). Right, time to learn about my love for random parenthesis— 
> 
> The observant among you may have noticed this fic is in a series now, and there’s a reason for that! Basically I started brainrotting about a PREQUEL with my best friend (who is amazing and helped me a lot with getting through this fic (also I sent her a lot of snippets because I’m a sadist), I love you so much [Oli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenmooni) ), so I’m thinking about posting said prequel as an elongated (my favourite update length is 10-20k, if that means anything) oneshot at some point! I can’t promise it’ll be straight away, (I’ll probably take a break to work on something else seeing as I wrote 40k for this in a MONTH, holy fuck) but if you’re interested in some Dream lore (with certain familiar mcyt characters) you can sub to the series if you wish! Or a user sub works t- [gunshots] 
> 
> I decided to colour the last line (unless you have creator’s style hidden, in which case you might be a little confused) because of [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26869744) by @maaiams, you should check it out!! It incorporates the end poem too, massive vouch from me! 
> 
> big love to all of you :))  
> Saint <3 
> 
> stupid postscript: the very last line i wrote was “darling, you are stronger than you know” and fuck fuck fuck, i’m actually not joking when i say i genuinely cried, idk writing this fic just hit man

**Author's Note:**

> kudos/comment leavers i love you so much! feel free to come say hi:
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/saintaches)  
> [tumblr](https://saintaches.tumblr.com/)


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